Dealing With The Police

POLICE!

That is what wasn't on the vehicle that I observed.

Quite often, as we patrol the campus that we are responsible for, we find ourselves faced with a dilemma. We observe suspicious activity at a location just outside our property. Since we are not police and our main goal is to be seen, we do not confront people. So, we place a call to our local police department. Their response is often quick and professional. However, there are times when the police feel that we are "trying to be the police."

This happened recently as I was patrolling the campus. I had been trying to contact a person at a residence that is adjacent to our property. They had witnessed a situation between me and another man who claimed that I had not done enough to protect his friend. His friend and another person got into a physical altercation. As I drove through the area to check on our property, he came out of a house waving a shirt and yelling for someone to stop. Another man was walking away from that general area and I thought he was yelling at him. A lady, sitting at a nearby residence in a lawn chair with what appeared to be relatives or friends, looked at me and said, "Don’t pay attention to him. He is crazy."

Well, I didn't think I needed to deal with a crazy person so I continued on my rounds. The next day I got word that the man had called the administration and complained that I had ignored his plea for me to stop.

I needed to contact the lady that was sitting in the lawn chair and see if she had seen anything criminal happening. I wanted to know for two reasons. Reason one is the Clery Act. Reason two is that I wanted to know if I had missed something that possibly I should have seen. I stopped by the lady's residence two or three times in the course of the day and nobody was home. The people who live there are acquaintances and I know them when I see them. I wouldn't call them friends.

Later that night I saw a vehicle parked in the driveway of the residence of the people I had been trying to contact. Thinking that the people to whom I needed to speak with had returned, I turned toward the driveway and had just started to pull in when I noticed that the man coming from the back side of the house was not the resident that belonged there. Then he acted like a deer caught in the headlights of a fast moving vehicle. I got a partial license number and as I drove away this guy jumped in his vehicle and drove off at an excessive speed.

I made a turn around an island that has two houses sitting in the middle and came up behind the vehicle. I thought I might be able to get a complete license number at the stop sign we were approaching just in case he had done something at the residence in question. I observed the vehicle for a couple of blocks then returned to our property and called the local police. I gave a description of the vehicle and the address of the house where he was seen.A few minutes later a police officer pulled up and said in a mad tone "What is the urgency about this vehicle?" To which I replied that there was no "urgency." He told me that there was a problem with me "approaching people who were not on our property." He then added something to the effect that "you are not the police and you can't go around approaching people." After explaining the details the officer said that he wasn't mad at me, he was just concerned for me. That was not what I heard in his voice. His demeanor changed and we parted as friends.

It seems that the problem was that I had inadvertently called the police about an undercover officer who was working on a case in the area. I almost accidentally messed up their operation.My suggestion to those in the sworn ranks is this. When you know that a school patrols an area heavily you should expect such occasions to occur from time to time. If you can, contact the head of security and tell them that you need them to stay out of area X until such and such time or date. You don't have to be specific about addresses or exactly what you are working on. That is not why or what I need to know. I just need you to tell me that you need me to stay away so that I don't call and send a uniformed officer to an address right next to where you are working because that doesn't help your undercover operations at all. Also, it would keep me, an unarmed guard, out of a potentially dangerous situation. If we work together, we can let you continue catching bad guys and we can continue keeping our campuses safe and out of your way.

Humor: Day of Registration

We have all seen it, that dazed look in the freshman's eyes as he gets to the next to last table in the registration process. It was fall and the registration line was long. I had many students left before I would be able to walk out the door for the evening and things such as computers were just not cooperating. I was about ready to fling the computer out the window and just use the good old pen and paper. Sanity had left me a couple of hours earlier and I too had a dazed look on my face as I went through the process of registering vehicles. This is not rocket science, but it is one of those things that you have to do each year.

One young freshman stepped up and didn't have her vehicle registration filled out. To save a little time I began asking the questions. You know, the important stuff like name, address, and phone. This young lady got all those questions right so I thought, What the heck, I might as well ask her what the license number is. Mind you, this is vehicle registration. She pulled out her driver's license and dutifully handed it to me. I politely handed it back and told her I needed her vehicle license plate.

She started reciting the letters PSD 1234 or something like that. With the noise in the background I couldn't tell if she was saying PFD or PSD. Being the resourceful person I am, I said, "Did you say P as in Paul, F as in Frank and D as in David?" She stood there for a minute looking at me with a puzzled look and then said, "I don't know what it spells." It provided a laugh for me just when I needed a good break from the routine of keying in mundane details.

There were several of us at the vehicle registration table and we all had a good laugh about it after she left. The poor freshmen, they don't realize how entertaining they can be at times.

Campus Security

This blog is intended to allow those in campus law enforcement to express opinions and discuss ways of effectively dealing with a changing world. It is designed so that both sworn and non-sworn personnel can gain something from the information and so that we can all work toward making our campuses safer and a better place for learning.

With that in mind, I invite people who are actively in campus policing or security or those who are retired to make suggestions, offer advice, air gripes and otherwise be helpful to one another.

I hope that you find this blog helpful and at times humorous.