Richland Community College gets own police force
DECATUR IL Sept 19 2018 — Richland Community College leaders are hopeful that a new campus police force can be up and running by the end of this year.
The Public Safety Department, which was unanimously approved during Tuesday night’s meeting of the college’s board of trustees, will allow Richland to have its own officers to handle incidents on campus.
“I think we all hope and are confident this will mean we’re a safer campus,” said Richland President Cris Valdez after Tuesday’s meeting. “I don’t know if we can stop things from happening, but we will have a much quicker response time and a fuller authority to deal with that issue.”
Currently, Richland contracts on-campus security to Per Mar Security Services, which provides five security staff. The board on Tuesday also approved a one-year extension of that contract, not to exceed $160,000, to allow the company to continue providing security overnight and during off-hours on campus.
The estimated cost for establishing the new department is $175,000, according to the board meeting agenda. That cost will include acquiring a squad car, evidence and firearms storage, communications equipment, uniforms and training. Once operational, the annual cost is estimated at $407,000.
The plan still needs to be approved by the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board, though that process is not expected to take long, said Dean Hazen, who was sworn in as chief of the department during Tuesday’s meeting.
Once they get approval, Hazen said they will start getting everything in place to have the department operational by the end of this year. That includes hiring two full-time officers so there will always be at least one on duty during Richland’s “peak hours” from early morning to late evening, Monday through Friday.
Hazen said he will be particular in the job search, as the officer will have all the training and equipment as a regular law enforcement officer. He also hopes to find people with some experience working on a college campus, who could strike up a rapport with students but also be aware where there could be a potential problem.
“I want someone who will be close to the students, yet will keep a respectable boundary,” Hazen said.
Richland officials have said establishing the department would help strengthen the college’s ability to handle on-campus incidents. As of now, security staff cannot arrest and transport people to the Macon County Jail and does not have training to handle “crisis situations.” Instead, the college must call local law enforcement and wait for their arrival.
Several of the board members spoke before the vote to stress their support of the change, with Trustee Dale Colee saying it was long overdue.
“I’ve felt for a long time that if something happened out here, we would have been finger pointed at, that we didn’t do enough to help,” he said.
Student Trustee Nathan Buggar cited a survey of students that asked, among other things, how they felt about the creation of a campus police force and whether it would make them feel safer. From the roughly 75 responses, Buggar said the majority of students were supportive of on-campus officers.
“From this sample, the majority of students very well support the idea of a police force and would greatly appreciate moving in that direction,” he said.
The department also opens up opportunities for students in Richland’s criminal justice program, Hazen said, such as internships or other ways to give students real-world experience while still getting college credits.
As someone who got his start in community college, Hazen said he’s excited about the potential partnership. One of the first things he did was reach out to Richland criminal justice coordinator Amy Cleary, he said.
“I told her I wanted to get involved with her program,” he said, “and I wanted to see what we could do to help encourage and foster her students into the pipeline into law enforcement.”
Herald and Review
