LEWISTON – Veronica Irish is a deep one.

While the man on the street fidgets and the police officer questions him with caution, Veronica sits inside the police truck and watches. She chews lightly on a fingernail and watches for potential drama.

She asks very few questions. She does not comment on what she sees. Veronica learns through watching and she watches with great care.

“I was interested in seeing a different side of the city,” the 17-year-old says. “A side I wouldn’t normally see.”

Welcome to the police beat, downtown Lewiston, the night before Thanksgiving. Veronica is one of the first of 15 members of the Lewiston Youth Advisory Council to ride around with police officers to see what it is like to confront the criminal side of the city.

She doesn’t seem nervous as officer William Rousseau pats down a man on Ash Street, questions him and checks for warrants. She says there is nothing about police work that she is apprehensive about.

Almost nothing.

“The only thing that makes me nervous about cops,” she says, “are their dogs.”

No worries. There are no dogs in sight. And so while Rousseau heads to an apartment on Blake Street to confront a group of loud revelers, Veronica stands in the hallway. She stands very still, listening to what is being said inside the apartment. The stern warnings from Rousseau and other officers. The protests of the tenant defending his right to party.

She stands, listens and watches. And then off to the next call.

The 15 members of the LYAC were invited to ride along with police after City Councilor Denis Theriault did it himself along with other members of the council.

“We got a ton of valuable information from it,” Theriault said. “It’s a whole different perspective when you’re inside the cruiser. I think it’s important for the members of the youth council to experience that.”

Veronica and her LYAC cohort, 17-year-old Luke Jensen, first took a walking tour of the police station, checking out the evidence rooms, the detective bureau, the polygraph machine. Then it was to the street where Veronica turned pensive, watching and absorbing.

Roughly 15 minutes after the party was broken up on Blake Street, she spotted a man she recognized on Lisbon Street. She smiled a little and said his name, more to herself than anyone else. Rousseau looked at her and nodded. For the next five minutes, they talked about people they both knew.

Later, on Main Street, Rousseau pulled over an erratic driver near Central Maine Medical Center. The driver’s criminal history was extensive, according to the computer inside the police truck. Veronica watched in silence from the truck, fidgeting with her necklace, as Rousseau questioned the man in the little red car.

On to the next call and the next one after that. A red light violation here, a report of people carrying pot plants there. Through it all, Veronica watched intently and seemed to be cataloguing the events of the night in a way that most people require a notebook to do.

Quite all right with Theriault, who was riding with a different officer.

“I think it’s important for them to have this kind of interaction,” he said. “The better informed they are, the more they can help us.”

For Rousseau’s part, he quickly became accustomed to Veronica’s taciturn style. He simply explained things as the night progressed. Why this person was given a summons while that person was let off with a warning. How the beats are arranged and which areas have been giving them the most trouble.

From call to call, Veronica nodded a lot and took it all in, the kind of person content to observe everything in studied silence and process it.

The kind of person, ironically, who tends to make a good police officer.