Police with a Passion: SRO Seth Meyer’s photography hobby contradicts the stereotypes of a typical police officer

Most soccer parents have their usual checklist of items to bring to a game: their phone, a chair and Cutie oranges and pretzels for a snack. But School Resource Officer Seth Meyer always brings something extra — his Canon-1DX — which he uses to take pictures of his 11-year-old daughter as she hustles down the field for her club soccer games. 

Like the other parents, Meyer is there to snap memories of his kids to cherish before they grow too old. But these moments with his family are also a way to weave his passion for photography into his busy life as a parent and SRO.

“I’m the guy there with the big camera and the long lense,” Meyer said. “It sounds obnoxious, but [my kids] have gotten really used to it and they tolerate me really well.”

Starting as a photographer for his high school yearbook, Meyer has continued to grow his love of photography, now taking any opportunity — from his daughter’s soccer games to his son’s boy scout activities — to use his camera.

“Photography is kind of a freeing experience,” Meyer said. “Some students expect us to see us [police officers] as being these really rigid robots, like, ‘I’m a police officer, ra ra ra,’ which is truly not the case for me. Doing photography is kind of that freedom away from this. You can escape being the cop and just kind of do your own thing and enjoy life.”

Along with his children’s activities, Meyer enjoys taking candid photos of people and landscape shots on family trips to Colorado or New York City. Going from developing photos in his high school dark room to using a professional camera and editing pictures digitally, Meyer’s photography skills have grown over years of practice.

“[What I love most about photography is] the creativity part of it,” Meyer said. “Just trying to compose the shot and kinda telling a story as you’re taking a photograph, that’s kind of the more fun aspect of it. And honestly sometimes it’s just kind of the adventure of going out and finding something to shoot.”

Meyer knows that students might have a hard time picturing him as a soccer dad with a photography side hustle because of the uniform and stereotypes that come with it, but students like junior Gerson Cardona who often visit Meyer and his coworker, Officer Tony Woollen, know that the two don’t fit this stereotype.

“I don’t find [his photography hobby] surprising at all,” Cardona said. “I know them personally. They’re really kind and very generous. They’re there for people. They could be therapists for all I know.”

Meyer’s sister-in-law, Shannon Heffron, who works at CAA, sees Meyer’s photography hobby as a reflection of his caring personality.

“If you just walked up to him in his uniform, he could look pretty intimidating,” Heffron said.
“You might have the misperception that he’s just a tough guy, run-of-the-mill cop that’s just there to enforce the laws. That’s not really his personality. There’s a lot more to him than that. He genuinely cares about people.”

Meyer knows he isn’t the stone-cold cop that students might expect him to be from movies and tv shows, and has no desire to be seen that way. He enjoys when students come visit him between classes, and loves hearing about things going on in the students’ lives that he can help them with or give them advice on. His ultimate goal is to be approachable to students.

“At the end of the day for me, this is just a job,” Meyer said. “I come in and work my 40 hours a week. I love being here at East and hanging out with everybody, but anybody that walks in this office knows [Officer Woollen and I] are just two regular guys. We have our own lives and our own hobbies and we do the same things that everybody else does, so there’s no reason to be intimidated by us.”

Meyer loves talking to students about his hobby or his family, even though it might not be what students or other police officers would expect out of an officer. Befriending students isn’t a requirement for his job, but he genuinely cares about the East community.

“We’re very comfortable in, not just our job, but who we are,” Woollen said. “[His openness] just shows how not just ingrained he is in this learning community, but he knows who he is as a person, and it is very vulnerable and open to the community seeing how he is.”