Healy seeks positive partnerships across campusBy Eric Quiñones Princeton NJ -- In a recent ceremony at Nassau Hall, the Department of Public Safety made a public commitment to seven core values that support its mission of keeping Princeton's campus secure. Director of Public Safety Steven Healy and members of his department offered testimonials to an audience of University cabinet members, staff members and students, describing the values that guide their work: integrity, respect, service, mentoring, professionalism, accountability and appreciation.
The dedication was intended to reaffirm the department's commitment to the University's informal motto, "Princeton in the nation's service and in the service of all nations." The ceremony arose from a strategic planning initiative led by Healy that aims to strengthen the department's problem-solving skills, community partnerships and professional development for public safety staff members. Previously the chief of police at Wellesley College and associate director of public safety at Syracuse University, Healy came to Princeton in January 2003. He recently spoke to the Weekly Bulletin about his transition to Princeton and his vision for the future of his department. How did you undertake the strategic plan for your department?My most important priorities were to try to understand the internal culture of my department and the wider culture of the University. I wanted to get a good feel for some of the gaps in my department, to find out what expectations we weren't meeting. That prompted me to interview each of the 62 members of the department over a period of about a month. In those conversations, several themes rose to the top -- issues of morale, professionalism, work schedules and others. It became obvious to me that we needed something more than just me saying what I expected of our performance and behavior. I was already committed to the idea of having a strategic plan, and in any good strategic planning process there comes a time that you need to talk about your values. I felt that we needed to put that step first, which would be important in our future endeavors for us to set a foundation. All of those values came from different members of the department -- they represent the aspirations of the team. Have you seen results from identifying those values?We just developed a new selection process for prospective employees, and we're in the process of developing a new promotion process. When we do have opportunities in our department, there will be no sense that this is some kind of hidden process. We want to become transparent, both to community members and ourselves. In addition, we have developed a new field training program. Officers who are put in new roles have someone assigned to them during training, which lasts from three to four months. That's one step toward the core value of mentoring we discussed. What other areas for change or improvement have you identified?People in the community see us in very traditional roles. Students see us primarily as the people who show up to let them into a room, to give them an escort, to take them to the hospital when they're intoxicated or to break up the parties. Those are all important roles, but it's far less than what I think we should be doing in terms of developing partnerships and helping to solve problems. The concept behind community policing, which I mentioned at the dedication, is that we actually are partners with members of the community in providing a safe and secure environment. In order to be partners you have to trust one another, and in order to trust one another you really have to get to know each other. One of the things we've been working on very hard is to go beyond that surface relationship we have with most segments of the community. That's what we're doing through our community partnership initiative. We are assigning an officer to all the residential colleges, to selected student organizations and to all the athletic teams. Through that officer who is assigned to serve as a liaison to those different groups, we can begin to offer programs, develop relationships, build that trust, and then we really start becoming a part of the fabric of the students' lives so they don't see us as those people out there on the periphery. What are examples of types of programs public safety can offer?We already offer a self-defense course designed for women. There are a lot of other crime-prevention programs that we can do, such as "Operation ID," which encourages community members to engrave a personal ID on valuable items to help prevent thefts or more easily recover stolen items. There's a program we offered at Wellesley called "Fatal Vision" that helped students understand the effects that alcohol has on their ability to carry out normal functions. You put on goggles that simulate different levels of intoxication. It's fun, but it's also eye-opening. Really what I want to do is let my officers come up with ideas for programming. I have a whole list of things that I think we could try, but I want suggestions to bubble up. You don't want to wait for a negative interaction to be a student's first and only interaction with public safety. We could easily sit back and say "you don't bother us, we won't bother you." That's a very reactive approach to campus policing. But in taking the positive approach we also have a role, I believe, in the education of our students. We have to play a role in helping prepare students to live in the wider society and helping them understand their role in creating safe, healthy communities. I would like to see our officers develop programs that will focus on those kind of things -- healthy living and safe communities. Is alcohol abuse among students the biggest problem facing your department?It is a major concern of ours, just as it is a major concern of most other people here at the University. We're having conversations about how best to address some of the problems that occur on Prospect Avenue. I think the University has gone about it the right way. It's a very complex issue that requires a multidisciplinary solution. It's not just a medical issue, it's not just a counseling issue, and it's not just an enforcement issue. You have to approach it from so many different angles. No one has it completely right yet, because if they did we wouldn't still be discussing the problem -- we would just copy whatever they were doing. But I think we're having the right conversations, and we're going about it the right way. What are some of the other major law enforcement challenges here?The great thing about the campus is that it is very safe, but people can begin to get a false sense of security. Before winter break we had a series of break-ins to motor vehicles, which is very disturbing because they happened in isolated parking lots. What we think about is, what if one of our students would have been in that parking lot when these people were doing this? We're very concerned about that and thinking about ways we can be smarter about providing safety and security in areas that are isolated but are still necessary for our students to traverse. I also want to start working closely with Thema Bryant-Davis (coordinator of Princeton's Sexual Harassment/Assault Advising, Resources and Education Office) regarding sexual assaults. We know for a fact that 70 to 80 percent of all sexual assaults nationwide are never reported. That's an unbelievably high number, and that ties very closely with what I was talking about in terms of trust and relationship-building. People are not going to report sexual assaults if they don't feel they can trust you, if they don't feel that you're on their side. As we talk about building relationships with the members of the community, one of the things we hope that we get out of those new relationships is a willingness for people to talk to us, tell us about what's going on in the residence halls, tell us about things we need to be concerned with so we can join with them to help solve those problems. We also have a team that's looking at pedestrian safety on campus. We've had some students injured in motor vehicle accidents in some areas that may not be as safe as we would like them to be. We have a team looking at pedestrian safety primarily on Washington and Alexander roads, but also all over campus. This will be our first real foray into problem-oriented policing -- which I mentioned in the dedication ceremony -- where you get cross-functional teams together to look at issues affecting the quality of life in the community. That team includes members of our department, students, staff members from facilities and representatives from the borough and the township. |
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