The housing offer from the town was among the deciding factors that helped Kasper feel comfortable taking the job, and the island’s housing crisis is major issues she has learned about in her first few months on Nantucket. It’s an issue, she says, that impacts her department greatly, along with every business and organization on Nantucket. “I don’t think I would have taken the job without housing only because in my role, the way that I do this job is being out in the community,” Kasper explains. Kasper says she is certainly cognizant of the fact that she is Nantucket’s first female chief of

police—a distinction she also held in Northampton—but emphasizes that gender has not been something she has spent a lot of time thinking about during her career in law enforcement and her rise to the top of now two departments.

“I’m proud of being a chief of police, regardless of my gender,” she says. “I think rising to the top of police organizations is hard, and so I feel proud of that. I’m very humbled and honored to have been selected here as well. It’s a lot of trust that the community has placed in me. But I don’t think about gender too much. I do understand the importance of representation to see women, especially in non-traditional careers, that are moving through the ranks, leading organizations.”

Kasper grew up in western Massachusetts, attending Mohawk Trail Regional High School in Shelburne Falls and later Greenfield Community College and Westfield State University. When asked how she got her start in law enforcement, Kasper emphasizes that it wasn’t some dramatic life event that led to her career choice, but rather a chat with her high school guidance counselor. “Many people that I’ve talked to say, ‘Oh, I’ve wanted to be a police officer since I was a little kid,’ but that was not the case for me,” Kasper says. “For me, I was in high school, I sat down with my high school guidance counselor and said, I don’t really know what I want to do.’ And she put a college course catalog in front of me and said, ‘Well, what classes are you interested in?’ And I looked through them, and I was attracted to criminal justice classes. So I went to college for criminal justice. And really, in my first year of studying criminal justice, I knew that would be a good career path for me.”

After more than two decades in law enforcement, Kasper says she is bringing many of the lessons learned in Northampton to her new role on Nantucket, especially a collaborative approach to addressing many of the problems the police department is asked to resolve. “When you look at the challenges that officers are facing, the types of calls they are going on, it has become abundantly clear over maybe the last five to seven years that the problems that we are sent to help people with require collaborative efforts from other community entities,” Kasper says, noting examples

like addiction, mental health and homelessness.

“Historically, police officers have been called to deal with those situations, but those problems are extremely complex, and it took decades for the person, probably, to get into the situation that they’re in … and it takes a lot of time, energy and effort to get them out of that situation and to help them properly.” On an island where these challenges are abundant, Kasper has already connected to other community entities like Fairwinds, A Safe Place and The Warming Place. “All those sorts of entities that work together, along with the hospital,” she explains. “So that’s really what I have seen change: a lot more collaboration for the good. It’s completely necessary to help address some of these complex problems.”