Posted by By: Clio Miller
Mr. Josh Holmes begins his journey as the new New Paltz High School security officer.
Walking into New Paltz High School at 7:57 am, you are greeted by a friendly and watchful face. James (“Josh”) Holmes, the security guard, asks for your school ID and says, “have a good day.”
He may be the new kid on the staff, but this is not Josh’s first rodeo. Before this, he worked security at the Valley Central School District and is now employed by Atlas, a private security company that has a contract with New Paltz High School. Most of his career, however, has been in the Brooklyn NYPD until he retired in 2012.
Working in the NYPD was a transformative process for Josh. Interacting with people who were so different from those with whom he was familiar taught him the importance of tolerance and understanding, traits he wants to bring to his security work.
“Something that I see might not be normal to me, but that doesn’t mean it’s not normal,” Holmes says.
“Being a police officer you have to know that you can really, really affect someone’s life–it’s the same here… I don’t want to take that lightly”
Many of the skills that Josh learned at the NYPD are very important for school security. He has spent many hours learning to watch body language and speech patterns, and became quite good at telling if someone was carrying a weapon. But Verbal Judo is the tool that Josh finds himself using most. It’s a tactic of de-escalation where you let the person you’re dealing with know that you hear and understand them, even if you don’t agree with them.
“Most people just want to be heard,” Holmes says, “They want to know that you understand what they’re saying to you.”
Josh’s main reason for going into security is that he wants other people’s kids to be as safe as he wants his own kids to be safe.
“It’s important to me that you guys can come to school, enjoy the day, and not have to worry about outside things.”
Josh has three kids. The oldest, his daughter, is currently in school training to be a nurse practitioner; the middle, his son, is in 10th grade, and is in love with electric guitar; and the youngest, his second son, is in elementary school.
“He’s my buddy,” Holmes says, “we do a lot of nerdy things together.”
Some of those nerdy things include collecting and displaying Star Wars ships and watching horror movies. They have a tradition called “Shocktober,” where they try to watch 31 horror movies in the month of October. They’re a little bit behind this year, but Josh is sure that they’ll catch up – he needs inspiration for the horror movie scripts he writes! He’s won multiple contests for horror script writing.
Overall, Josh would like students to know that he’s always there if they need to talk.
“I’m always approachable. Anybody can come up and talk to me. If it’s something majorly important that the administration needs to know about I have to tell them; but if it’s just something you want to talk about, I’m approachable.”
The Maroon 