Cpl. Clark-Gammage presents the Junior officers badge.

Recently, New Iberia Police Department Chief Todd D’Albor recognized Cpl. Christine Clark-Gammage as Officer of the Year.

Cpl. Clark-Gamage has served in a law-enforcement role for 17 years, joining the NIPD shortly after its creation in June 2018. Throughout her career at the department, she’s received numerous compliments from the staff at Johnston-Hopkins Elementary, where she is stationed as a resource officer.

Cpl. Clark-Gammage said she was genuinely surprised by the recognition. She thinks it was her daily diligence that caught the eye of her superiors.

“I come to work, I do my job to the best of my ability, I try to help people and I guess that’s what they felt was the reason why I deserved it,” Clark-Gammage said.

Serving in her role as a resource officer, she interacted with students every day, but she didn’t feel like it was enough, so she decided to establish a Junior Officer Program at the school. To design her program, she worked with a resource officer out of Calcasieu Parish, who had her own Junior Officer Program, to help accomplish this.

“I wanted to engage with the students more than seeing them in the hallways or seeing them in the lunchroom. I wanted to devise something that wouldn’t interrupt their educational time, but something that would get them to interact with law-enforcement more,” Clark-Gammage said.

She established the program in Sept. 2023, and had 27 students participate for the Fall semester. Currently, 17 students applied for her upcoming semester, which starts next month, but she expects more. Unfortunately, Clark-Gammage said she interacts with many students who are interested in participating, but can’t due to outside factors.

“I’m just trying to change the perspective on how they view law-enforcement. Some of them see officers in a negative light, because they may have interacted with an officer on call, and may have seen them in a more aggressive state. But I want them to see that there’s always a turnaround,” Clark-Gammage said.

Since joining law-enforcement in 2007, she has participated in several different roles. She said the only division she hasn’t worked in was Narcotics. She didn’t initially plan to follow a career path in law-enforcement, but when her peers went to college, she decided to join them. She wanted to pursue something that would help her to uplift her community, so she received an Associates degree in Criminal Justice from Lafayette Remington College.

While pursuing her degree, she worked with the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office, so naturally she joined the office as a Deputy after receiving her degree. She also served as the DARE officer and worked with students at 12 different schools in the parish. For many years, she patrolled New Iberia, so when she transitioned to the NIPD in 2018, nothing really changed for her.

Clark-Gammage hopes to one day serve in an administrative position within the NIPD, but said she would absolutely miss working with the students. She said if she does move to administration, she plans to use her position to implement similar Junior Officer Programs across the city.