MIDDLEBURY — American Legion Post 27 in Middlebury on March 10 presented Middlebury Police Officer Jared Harrington its Law Enforcement Officer of the Year award in a ceremony at Post 27’s Wilson Road headquarters.
Officer Harrington is a graduate of Middlebury Union High School and a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. He has been with the Middlebury Police Department since 2017. He lives in Middlebury with his wife and two young children. He also serves in the Marine Corps Reserve.
Police Chief Tom Hanley submitted Harrington’s name and recommend him for the American Legion Post 27 award.
He laid out Harrington’s accomplishments in the past year, including:
•Recipient of the Department Distinguished Service Medal and Life Savings Medal for going into a burning house on a frigid January night, prior to the arrival of the Fire Department, and forcibly removing an elderly resident with a cognitive impairment who refused to leave the home. He was able to get her out of the house and move her to safety where she ended up being tended to by relatives.
•Recipient of the Merit Commendation medal for spending three hours tracking an runaway high-risk psychiatric patient who had been violent and threatening to hospital staff and the later the police. He was able to take control of the person by calming the person down, and got him back to the emergency room for treatment.
•Recipient of the Merit Commendation for rescuing a male suffering from frostbite and hypothermia. At 3 a.m. on January 1, 2018, with an air temperature of minus 25 degrees (F), Officer Harrington came across a male in the roadway. He found him suffering from hypothermia and frostbite, rendered emergency first aid treatment and got him to the emergency room. The male survived.
Hanley also noted that Officer Harrington is the department’s non-lethal use of force instructor, having completed certification training at the police academy and provides in-house training for officers on non-lethal training and self-defense tactics. He is also the firearms and deadly force instructor in training.
“Officer Harrington’s conscientious attention to duty and his dedication to policing are evident in his daily work,” Hanley said in his recommendation.