In an effort to improve safety on campus, the University is instituting changes that will shift the burden of large-scale campus security to the University infrastructure, freeing the Duke University Police Department to concentrate on crime-related matters.
In an effort to improve safety on campus, the University is instituting a series of wholesale changes that will shift the burden of large-scale campus security to the University infrastructure, freeing the Duke University Police Department to concentrate on crime-related matters.
Executive Vice President Tallman Trask, who oversees the police department as well as most other non-academic aspects of campus, is trying to establish a “clear line of authority around all that touches security.”
“What I’m trying to do is stop parsing security out,” he said.
Security officers of various types are currently scattered throughout divisions of the University, including parking, facilities management and DUPD. Uniformed officers in all these areas are effective as a crime deterrent, Trask said, but the groups have difficulty collaborating and often “engage in various turf wars.”
Efforts to synthesize security into a single entity began last year when the University created the Department of Campus Services and named Kemel Dawkins as vice president. Campus Services controls most security-related divisions and has partial authority over the police department.
Other than Dawkins, there are few other links between security officers from DUPD and other areas. “We are trying to integrate all of those,” Dawkins said. “We’re trying to have a more broad-based view that is not compartmentalized.”
The University’s first step will be to consolidate communication about safety and security issues. This week Leanora Minai, who has served as a crime reporter and a public relations specialist, will come to the University to assume an expanded communications job that includes being DUPD’s official spokesperson. The duties of Minai’s post were previously split among student affairs, DUPD and other offices.
At first, Minai will primarily explain security developments to the community, officials said, but eventually she might take on a larger role coordinating among different divisions with security interests. She will also educate people about proper safety practices.
“It is not just reporting on crimes and incidents but helping us think about safety and security in a much broader fashion,” Dawkins said.
Many of these developments have been in the works for about a year, but a flurry of armed robberies at the beginning of the academic year spurred their immediate implementation.
Officials are also examining the particular challenges of patrolling and securing Duke’s campus, which is sprawling but designed for pedestrians. The campus, which also includes the Duke University Medical Center, has an unusually large number of access points connecting Durham and the University.
Campus security forces made efforts to legitimize their authority in the mid-1990s, during a time of rapid growth in the Medical Center. The security force, then known as Public Safety, moved into its current facility on Central Campus in 1995. A year later, it became the Duke University Police Department and trumpeted its role as “law enforcement officers.”
With the police department came a patrolling model that exchanged some officers on foot and bikes for officers in vehicles. DUPD’s focus also shifted from community interaction to crime prevention and response.
The latest moves aim to create a security presence that extends beyond law enforcement. Since 2002, the University has expanded its force of security officials who are not full police officers. Currently, about 10 Duke security officers patrol on foot or bike during each shift. After a series of incidents, the University added about 20 contracted security officers, nearly doubling the number of personnel on duty.
“Safety and security issues on university campuses have been evolving for a long period of time,” Dawkins said. “We move back and forth across a variety of continuums depending on the nature of the incidents that we are trying to respond to.”
The eventual result of the changes will be a shift in the role of DUPD and the creation of a single security entity that will be able to consider issues like lighting, parking, construction and landscaping in a way that DUPD is not equipped to do.
“It has changed the way we do business,” DUPD Chief Clarence Birkhead said. “It allows the police department to focus on crime issues and strategies.”
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