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Opinion

January 12, 2012

Our Opinion: We’ll miss Nicols

Cooperstown Police Chief Diana Nicols will be leaving her job shortly and will be missed by the community. She is being retired by the New York State and Local Retirement System that notified her last week that she is “permanently incapacitated for the performance of duties.” The incapacitation is the result of a knee injury she received in 2008 during a training class.

She has been through two surgeries, but the knee still gives her problems at times.

She is an 18-year veteran of law enforcement. Her career began in Oneonta in 1994 and in 2000 she became an officer in Cooperstown. Five years later she landed the job as chief of police — the same job once held by her father.

Nicols grew up in Cooperstown and knows the community well. That knowledge of the community helped to make her an effective police chief.

She and the officers in the department do many things for and with the community that she believes are an important part of small-town law enforcement and we would agree with her. Many of them are what she called “little services,” but important to residents. There are things such as dark house watches, fingerprinting job applicants, helping with lock-outs, traffic control for parades and events and providing preventative information to residents and school children. Many of them are the kind of things for which large urban departments don’t have the time or resources. Nicols said she has enjoyed her employment in Cooperstown and that the retirement is “bittersweet.”

“I can’t think of a group of people I would rather work for or live among,” she said. “It’s the best job I have ever had and the best job I will ever have. I’m glad I chose Cooperstown.” And we’re glad Cooperstown chose Nicols. We wish her well in her future pursuits.

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