You need to build a community that doesn’t tolerate bullying — ever.”

Scott Sullivan

A curse, a promise, then a resolution

Scott Sullivan said he used humor to deal with bullies as a kid. A lighter touch also came in handy years later as a police officer.

He recalled his first day as a school resource officer in 2015, introducing himself to students in the cafeteria at Portsmouth High School.

It didn’t begin well.

“The first thing a kid says to me is, ‘Blank you, you blankin’ pig. He yelled it,’” Mr. Sullivan said, noting the student was well known to others and didn’t hide behind anyone when he shouted the profanities.

The officer paused to ponder his options.

“I could have walked away and I would have been walked over for the rest of my career. The next second, I wondered how I could destroy this kid, and that’s not going to go well either; that’s a bully bullying a bully.”

Instead, he turned to face his antagonizer with a smile.

“I went, ‘Hey, I’m Officer Sullivan — nice to meet you. I’ve never heard anyone pronounce my name the way you just did. Is that French?Because it sounded like you just asked for help. You know what I do for people who I want to help? I want to be with them all the time. So I want to walk you to class from now on, to your locker, to your car. I want to make sure you’re safe on the weekends, too.

“But maybe I misheard you. Maybe you just mispronounced my name. Again, it’s Sullivan. I’ll say good morning and you say good morning and we’ll both have a great day.’

“He went, ‘OK, sir.’ I said, ‘No, sir is way too formal. Officer Sully is just fine.’

“Then he looked at me and I looked at him and said, ‘Boy, I bet that didn’t go the way you thought it would.’”

The face-off went around the school “like wildfire,” Mr. Sullivan said.

“He was a popular kid and he kind of got busted down, but I didn’t freak out on him,” he said. “That’s a skill, and you can teach that. I believe in stopping things before they blow up.”

— Jim McGaw

PORTSMOUTH — Scott Sullivan knows what it’s like.

“I was incessantly bullied as a kid,” said the retired Portsmouth police officer, better known to all as “Sully.”

“I looked like a girl, I was a geek. My parents didn’t have a ton of money. I was really tiny; I weighed 118 pounds when I graduated high school.”

Fortunately, he was one of those kids who had the tools to diffuse a bad situation. “I’ve always been a jokester,” he said. “The number-one way is denying it’s happening, so I’d make a joke about it. They’re defense mechanisms.”

For many youngsters, however, bullying is a nightmare they often must endure every day. Battling this national scourge has now become “Sully’s” crusade — something he’d even like to build into a profession as a presenter and speaker. He’s made presentations on bullying to several schools and most recently spoke to parents at Thrive coffeehouse and the local library, but he wants to go bigger and possibly bring his show on the road. 

“I’ve basically spent everything I have — my entire life savings — to get this to where it is now. I need to start doing it as a profession and go out there,” Mr. Sullivan said.

But he’s only interested in doing that if school districts, police, parents, kids and other stakeholders work together on a “comprehensive community-based approach” to combat bullying.

“You need to build a community that doesn’t tolerate bullying — ever,” he said.

“Sully” was appointed as the Portsmouth school district’s first school resource officer in 2015, and won over many students’ trust from his home office at the high school. Last year, however, he left the force for reasons he hasn’t disclosed in any detail publicly. 

“I retired and I didn’t want to, but physically and emotionally I had to retire. I have no problem saying that now; it used to embarrass me,” said Mr. Sullivan, who now operates a second-hand furniture store on Chase Road, Sully’s Second Chance.

But Mr. Sullivan, who has given many presentations about drug use and other issues that young people struggle with, had no intention of abandoning his efforts to help kids navigate life’s often-difficult paths. “I knew I was going to do some public speaking. I’ve spoken to thousands of kids and done all sorts of things, but I’d say 18 months to two years ago I started focusing on bullying,” he said.

He defined bullying as an “unwanted behavior from an imbalance of power that’s repeated or likely to be repeated,” and said it's something of which many people — adults included — are guilty. “If you go to any child’s sporting event, you hear fans yelling at the other team, you hear parents yelling at the other team. That is the absolute definition of bullying — what parents and kids do at the games,” Mr. Sullivan said.

With social media now engrained into the lives of today’s youngsters, the typical idea of a classic bully has shifted, he said. “When I was a kid, it was the larger, bigger loudmouth kid. Now, you can take an 80-pound, sixth-grade girl who can be just as vicious,” Mr. Sullivan said.

He researched the issue in depth and quickly learned bullying encompassed all the things he had already been teaching about. “Drugs and alcohol, dealing with anxiety and depression, self-harm, withdrawal … it really covers the gamut,” he said. “This is the one thing that has so many layers and causes so many of these issues.”

He started putting together a plan — “A lot of it is my own thoughts, a lot if from personal experience — seeing how kids treating each other,” he said — that deals with bullying head on and from many different angles.

“I’m looking for a town that will have the courage to do it, because we’ve done things wrong,” Mr. Sullivan said. “That’s not an insult, but we just continue to do things the same way. Everyone wants autonomy, or nothing to do with it. It fix this problem you need parents, students, community, police, the school administration and teachers — all the staff.”

He readily admits his ideas have been dismissed by many, and that he’s often considered a polarizing figure. “My approach has been laughed at and I’ve been told I’m crazy, but it’s so easy. People say you can’t teach behavior. You absolutely can teach behavior,” said Mr. Sullivan.

‘Really nobody’s fault’

Roughly 20 percent of school students — 10 million annually — are victims of bullying and school administrators, guidance counselors and teachers, along with police, are often unfairly blamed for not doing more to solve the problem, Mr. Sullivan said. “It’s not the school’s job to raise our children, to teach them about bullying,” he said. “I certainly feel they have a responsibility, just like all those other stakeholders … but they’re not always trained to deal with that emotional aspect. It’s really nobody’s fault.”

A student who’s been bullied is often sent to the principal, who may say, “’It’s just words — toughen up. Things are going to get better,’” he said. “Psychologically, that’s the worst thing an adult can do to a child. Conversely, if someone who’s their peer says that, it’s a great thing,” he said.

Administrators should instead make sure that child is seen by the most qualified person, he said. “They should say, ‘Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry about this bullying. Let me get you to social services — the school social worker, school psychologist, student assistance person.'"

Mr. Sullivan believes there should be a school psychologist for each grade to make sure students get the proper attention they need. He’s even floated the idea of districts hiring “bully liaisons” that would focus all of their attention on that one issue.

“Who do you report bullying to? I don’t know and I consider myself an expert on this topic. Do you know what happens when you report the same thing to all different people? Parkland, Florida happens,” he said, referring to a high school shooting earlier this year that killed 17 and injured 17 others. “Everybody reported a very similar thing to 20 different entities. It’s like ‘Wheel of Fortune’ — if I gave 20 different people one letter of the puzzle, nobody gets that puzzle. If they hung out together for 30 seconds, everybody gets the puzzle. That’s what happens when we report things to a non-centralized location.”

As for the added expense of hiring more people to address the bullying problem? “I think it’s a drop in the bucket,” said Mr. Sullivan, who believes less bullying would also lead to lower incidents of school shootings, suicides and drug use, while improving test scores and emotional well-being.

More teeth needed

Mr. Sullivan said schools also need to:

• Beef up and give more teeth to policies that address bullying. (He calls a 2012 state law that many districts “copy and paste” into student handbooks the “Grandmother Law because it’s old and has no teeth.”

• Compile accurate statistics on incidents of bullying (“You cannot fix this problem unless you actually document it,” he said.)

• Teach students that telling an adult they’re worried about a classmate’s wellbeing doesn’t make them a “rat” or a “snitch.” 

And he wants to make it clear that police should be notified if an incidence of bullying has risen to the level of a crime.

“People say, ‘But it happened on school grounds.’ That’s like telling me that crime that happens at Wal-Mart is Wal-Mart’s problem,” Mr. Sullivan said. “If your kid is punched in the face and they’re 12, 16 years old? That’s a crime and it should be reported as such. That doesn’t mean somebody’s going to jail. It’s reported and documented. There’s lots of ways to change it from there.”

Young people also need to step up and understand how much their own words matter, he said. He recalled being at PHS when a movie night was announced in the lunchroom to cheers — until students learned it was a fund-raiser for the LGBT Club.

“Then there was booing and some horrific comments made,” he said. “So I ran and yelled into the lunchroom, ‘What are you kids doing? That’s just not the way we act, folks.’ They realized that they got me mad and I think I had enough credibility. And that’s the number-one thing, getting the kids who are the peers. They know when their friends have gone too far. There’s one kid who knows something’s wrong, and he’ll say, ‘Dude, that’s not cool.’ That little thing will go 50 miles more than anything I’d say.”

When he works with youngsters in schools, Mr. Sullivan often gives them his own “24-hour challenge.”

“I ask kids, ‘Can you not give someone junk for 24 hours?’ I don’t say be nice to them or hold doors for them or be their friend. If there’s a kid that you make a comment to every day, just don’t do it for a day. I tell them, ‘Guys, if you can’t do that for 24 hours, you have bigger issues than you realize.’”

He then talks to the students who are on the receiving end of some unkind comments. “They’ll say, ’Hey, no one gave me crap for a day.’ 

“It’s so simple. I think we’ve just lost our way as a society.”

If you’re interested in booking Scott Sullivan for a speaking engagement or to present his program to a school or other group, contact him at 401/954-6728 or bullyhelpnow@yahoo.com.