1 How do you feel about the level of campus safety right now?

Thompson

Well, from everything that I’ve seen, I don’t think there’s an issue with campus safety right now.

It seems like there’s a perception, at least from what I’ve read in newspaper articles and a couple of conversations from students, there’s a perception that campus life could be safer.

But I think that’s based on what I call urban legends and rumors as opposed to anything specific and facts.

There are a number of different programs in place to provide for movement after hours to and from study or faculty locations, housing and cars, so I believe the University and university police department have been taking some proactive steps to assure the campus is as safe as it can be.

Certainly I’m speaking from a position of ignorance, and if I’m fortunate enough to get the position, I’ll both be looking at campus safety and trying to dispel rumors surrounding campus safety issues.

Staubitz

I did do a ride along with one of the officers there on the night shift, and I think there are not enough officers on streets as a uniformed presence.

So, I think if I were to come there, the first thing I would do is to try to get as many people out on the street in uniform meeting with the public.

As far as developing relationships with the community, I think that’s important, and that starts with the chief on down.

I think that while there’s a lot of good structural basis already in place, there needs to be more uniformed presence, more contact and more relationship development with the different people in the community.

Vinson

I believe the level of safety is acceptable at this point.

I do believe, though, that there are some areas that perhaps can be improved upon by working with the other offices and divisions to address any gaps, if you will.

But from what I’ve seen and from what I’ve heard, I do believe the level of safety is adequate. However, some improvements can be made.

2 How do you plan to work and collaborate with the Seattle Police Department?

Thompson

Well, we’re unique because the University is … a city within a city. In my case, I’m fortunate because having been involved with law enforcement in King County for 30 years I already have very strong relationships not only with the city of Seattle, but all law enforcement agencies in King County, including Washington State patrol.

So one of the first things I have on my list is to set up a meeting … and introduce myself and start working through the process of making sure all the police departments on the university campus [and the] Seattle Police Department are working collaboratively on joint crime missions, and also working towards open lines [of] communications so that events that happen off campus but near enough to the University that are important — so that we are communicating and pushing it out to the faculty, student body and employees on campus.

So really, just making sure that we’re talking and getting together, I imagine a minimum of once a month, probably twice a month, just to have open conversation meetings about aspects of crime and criminatlity that affect both the Seattle Police Department and the U.

Staubitz

Well, I do that right now at the state capitol. It’s similar in many ways in that it’s smack dab in the middle of the three highest crime grids in the city of Phoenix, so we constantly are working together with the Phoenix PD in different efforts to combat crime through community awareness and those types of things.

So I think I would start my very first day developing relationships and a liaison with the Seattle PD, similar to what I’m doing now, and that would include participating in joint efforts in problem areas with joint patrols, and then just trying to find opportunities, as well, for our campus officers to get better training through them.

Vinson

I think collaboration is absolutely critical to ensure [a] safe and secure environment for all the faculty, staff, visitors, students and staff, and all of the external constituents as well. I would hope I would be able to meet … weekly or monthly with the command chair or the leadership chair at the Seattle PD — perhaps have ongoing training, perhaps get involved in task force with them, maybe do joint patrols with them. And I think those type of things will ensure that we’re working together to provide the appropriate level of service to the campus community as required so that everyone is safe and secure.

3 Do you feel that campus and UWPD relations need improvement? Why or why not?

Thompson

I don’t know. My snapshot assessment is really over the period of a couple opportunities to visit the campus prior to the interview process last week and certaintly my involvement with the interview process. I get the feeling that both the segments involved, both campus life in general and the PD feel that relationships could be better.

Now I don’t know what the root causes of those feelings are, but I know that one of the things I stressed was trying to get officers in the department out and working within the community and campus itself — getting out of police cars, being more visible on bicycle patrols, being just more open and approachable.

An open liaison, certainly with the PD and campus newspaper and any other publication being sent out, will be critical because in the absence of a professional relationship, rumors are going to take on — rumors that if [they] don’t get addressed, quickly become fact.

It all comes down to just being open and approachable and having the community not concerned about talking to a campus police officer. One student asked me what my legacy would be for UW, and my legacy for breaking down barriers and opening up communication would be that a campus police officer could walk down any facility hallway on the university grounds, and the first thing on someone’s mind would not be, “Gee, what just went wrong, or what happened that was bad?” It would be just, “Oh, look it’s a campus police officer out on patrol.”

Open and effective communication is going to be critical.

Staubitz

Well, I do think they need improvement, and based on my two days there, it was pretty evident that many of the student groups and even some of the employees need to have better understanding of what their PD can do.

And then the relationship development; many student groups have had bad experiences with the campus police and maybe with just police stops in general, so I think from day one, developing those relationships, possibly training with student groups, developing internship volunteer situations, and then crime prevention programs and that type of thing will help develop the relationship.

And then, just a uniformed presence where the students and employees feel comfortable talking with their police officers.

Vinson

I think when I look at a campus police department, I believe that yes, relationships can be improved from what I’ve seen and from what I’ve read.

I believe that the campus police department can do a better job of showing their value to the overall campus community, and I believe we can do that by having a higher level of visibility, openness and transparency for the department. We’re communicating vision, mission, goals and accomplishments so everybody knows we’re there.

First off, why we’re there, what our role is, and that our ultimate goal is to ensure a safe and secure environment for all. And we need to have an open door policy … I think communicating what the police department does can go a long way.

4 Where do you draw the line between reporting incidents to the public versus addressing them privately?

Thompson

I talked during the interview process about trying as best I could to have a transparent police department, but again, there is going to be, in any organization, a series of complaints involving either people or processes, and not all of those complaints are something that you want to flood out into the public.

Somebody who contacts the PD and is upset because they got a parking violation — is that something we need to do a press release on to the entire university? No, I don’t think so. I think the information that comes out from the police department has to be timely and appropriate toward not only public safety, but also in maintaining the integrity of the PD and public trust in the PD … so the question is, how much information should you really supply to, in this case, the university, and if you’re not supplying it, why?

Well, today for example, and even during the course of our conversation, I’m working on a complaint involving a police officer in my department. Does the public have a right at this point to know anything about it? No, because it’s a complaint that hasn’t been investigated yet, so we need to maintain a certain amount of confidentiality.

If at the conclusion of the complaint, there is a vested public need in knowing the information, then without identifying the officer, again, they have rights to go ahead and put the information out that a complaint was issued.

We investigated it, we found that the complaint was valid, and appropriate discipline was held against the officer. But again, it’s got to be timely, and there has to be a purpose behind it, so I don’t believing in withholding information.

Staubitz

I don’t think I’ve ever worked for an organization where they reveal lawsuits that are happening … It’s probably not a good idea to reveal internal complaints until they come to a close.

I don’t think that that’s probably appropriate to reveal that in a press release as far as complaints. But everything should be transparent in a PD, and in many cases its already a matter of public record, so I think that just having a good open relationship with the press and the different media is important, and knowing that their police chief and any information that they get will be honest and open, and that the information will be as much as we can possibly give.

Vinson

I believe that the police department needs to be as transparent as possible in terms of reporting situations or events to the police. We need to hold ourselves accountable … I believe, again back to transparency … [the situation] could be an issue perhaps where we had some bad choices or decisions.

I believe those are situations where the public needs to understand [that] as a law enforcement agency our goal is to do the best job we can do to provide those services. However, we will sometimes unfortunately make some mistakes along the way.

I believe that the public understands that if we make mistakes, we at least admit our mistakes, but also put a plan in place to make sure that those mistakes never happen again.

Along the same lines, I think it’s important again to report [to] the public the good things that the department is doing, as well as the good things the officers are doing.

5 What will you do to improve campus safety in the future, to ensure an incident such as the Rebecca Griego shooting never occurs again?

Thompson

Well unfortunately, there’s nothing that can be done that would guarantee that that kind of tragedy never happens again. You’re dealing with an open campus; it is public access property. I think everyone in this conversation appreciates that everyone from off campus can walk on campus and use public facilities. What we can do is work with both faculty and employees and students so that when we know that there’s a potential for this kind of tragedy, that we can proceed with whatever proactive steps are possbile. What I mean by that is sitting down with the faculty member and doing a risk assessment matrix, or a threat assessment if you will, and determine what things we can do on campus to ensure on campus. That can mean moving to an alternate work location. It could mean trying to facilitate them working off campus, working with the local law enforcement where the initial complaint investigation was taking place…helping the employee or the student to alternate their lifestlye choices….But we would work with the individual tht was involved in the situation…to try to help them, and the other employees who work around them, to be as safe as possible. In the tragedy that occurred, in the shooting and suicide, again, if you can give me an idea of how we can absolutely guarantee preventing that kind of action, I’ll write a book on it and return it to law enforcement and make a fortune. Because, unfortunately, again, that’s just impossible.

Staubitz

We have to remember that in an open campus situation, there’s no guarantees, but there’s certainly things we can do to work towards prevention of those types of tragedies. One of the things that I do here at the state capitol is to offer workplace violence prevention training to new employees and to other interested groups of employees. So constant opportunities for training — where we can talk about the warning signs of these types of situations, because, in most cases where there’s a workplace violence situation, when you start doing interviews and talking to people, you find that there were warning signs, but people did not know what to do with that information. If you offer training and work with people so that they understand warning signs and then have a good communication process with the PD, then you can try to prevent these things. I know that they do have some things in place already, such as if someone has a court order injuction to work with the PD. [We must] make sure we’re aware of these types of situations. Sometimes the communication breaks down to where the PD is not aware that there’s an ongoing situation, so more communication, more training and good common sense in patrolling and uniformed presence.

Vinson

Well, that’s a very tough, tough, tough unfortunate event. I’m not sure that you can prevent something like that from occurring, however, I believe that you can put mechanisms in place to reduce the chances of those events from occurring. For example, you can continually train all individuals, faculty, staff and administrators to be on the lookout for suspicious situations. You can train employees to report, and ensure they have the mechanisms in place to report those types of events from occurring. You can also ensure that the police are trained and responding to these type of situations… I believe as police or [the] law enforcement department we have to educate. We have to train all of our constituents what to do in those type of situations, to follow up any leads, to try to investigate any complaints that are filed, but more importantly, to respond to them as they occur. But I’m not so certain you can prevent those types of things from occurring. You can make sure that you’ve done everything you can to try to reduce the chances of them occurring.

6 How do you feel the recent discrimination lawsuit has affected the UWPD and their ability to affectively operate on campus?

Thompson

I don’t think its affected their ability to effectively operate on campus. You’re talking about some very specific allegations that I’m not privy to, and the only thing that I’ve read about it is in the newspaper, and that’s not a really good way to form a professional opinon. I think that the PD wants to see, certainly, what the outcome of the lawsuit is going to be and just give everyone a chance to air their grievances. I don’t think that its going to be a concern for relationships between the University of Washington and the rest of the campus or the Seattle PD. It’s like anything else. An employee in the PD has the same rights that any other person does in the United States, and if they feel those rights or an employment violation has occurred, then they have every right to seek legal resolution, and that’s all that’s happening here. You have a group or number of individuals who feel that something has happened to them. They don’t feel it was proper, so the same way a private citizen would seek legal recourse, that’s all these employees are doing. They’re looking to get some sort of legal recourse out of a situation where they felt they were the victim, and that’s entirely appropriate. We’ll just have to wait and see what the process plays out with. It might be that the lawsuit is not found in their favor, and we, as a PD, would look at that in total and try to decide if things could be done better operationally or internally. It could be that it’s found in their favor, then we would try to see what went wrong and how we can fix it so that two things happen: number one, that we’re not in a lawsuit again, and number two, that we make a better environment for our officers to work in and for university life, in general, to revolve around the officers.

Staubitz

I‘ve read some of the articles, and I think it’s very unfortunate. I really don’t know all the details. It’s certainly only one side of the story, and obviously, if those things are true and those circumstances are existing, then there’s a lot of work or training, and possibly some discipline issues, that may result. But I think it needs to all come forward and that the facts need to be found. But myself, moving into a new situation like that, I would want to be at the forefront of ensuring that there’s no discrimination issues, such as the ones that were outlined in the paper.

Vinson

From what I know about the lawsuit, the limited information that I have, again, I can’t say if it has affected their ability to provide services to the campus community. It’s my understanding that there have been challenges within the department, however, I do believe they are still going out and trying to do a best job they can with the resources they have, in spite of those challenges they have within the department.

7 What are your plans to improve internal affairs within the department?

Thompson

I don’t know that the internal affairs needs improvement; again, that’s an unknown. It could be that the internal investigations process works just fine. I do have some questions that I [would] ask if I get the position. One of those is to make sure that the investigative piece of the PD is separate from the administrative investigation of complaints of misconduct. There’s some legal issues there, and any law enforcement agency wants to make sure that in the event of a report of misconduct, especially if there’s a potential crime involved, that the administrative review is not tainted or compromised by the legal review. And, again, there’s a purposeful labor law in that. Plus, you just want to make sure that those checks and balances are in place. But beyond that, I don’t know that it needs fixing. I’ll certainly want to look at it, just based on the fact that we do have these newspaper articles out there. We do have some concerns, and I would imagine that the vice provost and university president are both interested in making sure that the policies and procedures for investigations are up to industry standard, and that we’re not opening ourselves up for either lawsuit or inappropriately victimizing the employees of the PD.

Staubitz

I think that one of the most important things is that if a complaint is brought against an officer, then it needs to be dealt with quickly, for those officers’ benefit as well as the complainers’, and professionally, so the standards are in place. We just need to ensure the police policies as well as university policies are followed professionally as well as quickly.

Vinson

Well, we have to evaluate the process, see what’s working, see what’s not working and see if there are areas that need to be improved. If there are areas that need to be improved, then we would make those changes. But I have to admit that I am not up to speed…if changes need to be made to the internal process, then we would definitely do that. I just want to make sure that the process is transparent, we are holding employees accountable, and that the public knows exactly… what is occurring within that department.

8 How would you respond to a major safety incident on scale with the Virgina Tech shooting?

Thompson

If we’re talking on a scale of one to 10, we’d be at an 11 or 12. The reality is, the University PD has roughly 57 to 60 commissioned police officers. Now, that doesn’t mean that that many officers are available or on shift at any one time. Youll have you’re minimum staffing of say five to seven officers. The others are at home, which could be anywhere in the three county area, so its not as if we’re going to be able to hit the page button and have all of those officers there immediately. That means that the officers that we do have on campus will respond immediately to the scene. If it’s the case of an active shooter, then the officers will attempt to locate that person and take them into custody as soon as possible. Simultaneous to that response, we’ll be contacting the Seattle PD, and we’ll be asking for mutual aid, and we will set up an instant command system — that is whoever the ranking person is. Obviously, if it’s during campus hours, more than likely myself or one of the assistant chiefs, depending on who’s on or off campus. But we’ll set up a command post, we’ll initiate an immediate response to the area and we’ll do what we can to locate the suspect and bring them into custody and then provide life and safety to any injured campus employees, faculty or staff students. Then, as part of the ongoing investigation, determine whether or not we have all of the suspects in custody and accounted for or if we have any more. At the same time that’s going on, of course, we’re broadcasting out on the text message alert system for campus life to, in effect, stop for students to [find shelter] and to obviously get out of public areas, and we’d be addressing it, I want to say, the same way that Virginia Tech did, but not the same way. If you know their set of circumstances, there are a number of incidents that occurred where they felt that the incident was contained, and that there was no connection between shootings that had just occurred. You cant’ make that kind of assumption, so the best we could do is we would treat it as a critical incident. Instant management system would be initiated, Seattle PD would be called for mutual aid, and we would attempt to locate the suspect and take them into custody as quickly as possible so that no one else, including the suspect, would be injured and there would be no further loss of life. That’s a worst-case scenario for any police chief; I don’t care if its in a university setting, a mall, a football game at the stadium in downtown Seattle. We plan for them, we train for them, but you keep your fingers crossed that they never happen.

Staubitz

I would respond in a way that is appropriate with the national instant management system [and] make sure that the operational system is handled correctly — that the notifications are made, if there are liaisons with other PDs, for resources and those things are planned out before situations happen to make sure that the situation is safe. Every situation is different in that respect, but I think securing the scene and making sure that the new people that are working are safe, ensuring that an investigation is appropriately done, and hopefully preventing it from the onset.

Vinson

When responding to a situation of the magnitude of something that occurred at Virginia Tech, you have to be very deliberate and systematic in terms of how you actually deal with it… I would work with my demand team to set up a perimeter to ensure that, first of all, that the threat is no longer present. Then we would look at ensuring that the suspect is apprehended, work with the local police department to determine what resources we need, and then assembling… administrators like the VP and the communications associate vice president— working from that level. Then we start the investigation to see what exactly what transpired and then go from there.