The University of Washington is in the process of hiring a new chief for the UW Police (UWPD). The selection committee has narrowed its search to two candidates.

One of the candidates, Barbara O’Connor, is the chief of police at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She met with students, faculty and administration at the UW April 10 and 11.

The other candidate, Robert Karnofski, an assistant police chief at the Auburn, Wash., police department, will be on campus today, and students will have the opportunity to ask Karnofski questions at an open forum.

The search for a new chief of police began in October 2007, when former UWPD chief Vicky Stormo announced she would be retiring as of Jan. 31. Stormo had been chief of the department since 1999. Assistant Chief Ray Wittmeir has assumed the role of interim chief until a new chief is appointed.

Following the announcement of Stormo’s resignation, a committee was formed to find her replacement. As of Sept. 2007, the UWPD has been organized under the administrative oversight of the Vice Provost of Student Life, Eric Godfrey. This reorganization was part of an activist effort on campus to increase communication between the police and the students they’re entrusted to keep safe. As part of this effort, the vice provost for student life and the Student Advisory Board were granted a large role in selecting the new chief of police.

Also on the committee are representatives from Health Sciences, the Office of Minority Affairs, Media Relations, Campus Life, human resources, faculty, the Graduate and Professional Student Senate, ASUW and the UWPD.

The committee first launched a national search for candidates. They hired a human resources firm called Waldren to assist with finding and selecting the right person for the job.

“In the beginning, we were trying to figure out what would make this a job people would want, so we formed a brochure, which included positive things about UW and Seattle, which was given to the firm,” said Chloe Ameh, the former co-chair of the Student Advisory Board and an adviser at the Office of Minority Affairs.

After the initial response, the firm whittled the number of applicants down to 17 strong candidates, which were then reviewed by the committee.

“We wanted someone that the students could relate to, and someone that was very responsive to student’s needs, particularly regarding safety,” said Anttimo Bennett, who is also a former co-chair of the Student Advisory Board and is the director of Community Relations for ASUW.

Ameh echoed these sentiments regarding accessibility and commitment to students’ needs.

“As a student, I think this job absolutely needs to go to a candidate that is responsive to students,” Ameh said. “Not only are students the biggest population for this department, we are the reason this department exists.”

Ensuring safety should also be a big priority for the new chief, Ameh said.

“It’s not a safe environment, and we want to feel safe,” she said. “I don’t want to just hear solutions to deal with the problems; I want to see the problems fixed.”

Students can be more involved in the selection process by attending the open forum.

“At this point, students can be present at the forum to ask questions and to get a feel for who they want as their next chief,” Bennett said.

Student involvement is just one component of increased communication between students and the law enforcement officers that serve them, Ameh said.

“The chief should be a model by coming to these events, by talking to students, and being a part of these forums,” she said.

Based on priorities regarding student safety, the committee chose 10 strong candidates from the original seventeen. They then conducted video conference interviews with those candidates from the Odegaard media room. Following the video interviews, the committee met yet again to whittle down the list to the strongest contenders. 

After several more committee meetings, three candidates were chosen to come to the UW. Of those three, one candidate withdrew, leaving O’Connor and Karnofski remaining.

The next step will be for the committee to make its final selection, which it will then submit to Eric Godfrey, who will hand down the final decision.

“It will come down to a very definite decision,” Ameh said. “Eric Godfrey has the final say, but I’ll be surprised if the final choice is different that what the committee picked.”

Barbara O'Connor profile

Last Thursday, Barbara O’Connor, one of the two finalists for the position of UW Police Chief, met with a small group of students and faculty in an open forum in Schmitz Hall.

O’Connor is chief of police at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she has worked since 1987. She was promoted to chief in 2001. She also serves as director of security at UMass and had a brief stint as acting chief of security at Mount Holyoke College in 1992.

O’Connor spent two days touring the UW campus and meeting with President Emmert, the provost, and various deans, faculty and students. She was given a tour of the campus, the UW police station on Boat Street, and the surrounding neighborhood. O’Connor told the group Thursday that UW and UMass share some characteristics, but that working as chief of police at the UW would present some unique challenges.

“I’ve dealt with student-related problems; just like at the UW, there’s the issue of keeping students safe and also dealing with the nearby neighborhood and the Greek system, but UMass is basically rural,” she said “Seattle is a big city. Of course, any crime could happen on any campus, and Seattle is a relatively low-crime city, but you still have 30 homicides a year. We don’t have that.”

Those in attendance Thursday were able to pose questions and express concerns to O’Connor. Linda Anderson, an employment specialist in human relations at UW, told O’Connor what she would like to see dealt with by a chief of police.

“I want to feel safe as a woman on campus after dark,” Anderson said.

Other questions related to balancing security for students and faculty with the sense of openness and community a college campus should have, particularly in the wake of campus shootings like the one at Virginia Tech last spring.

“The biggest thing I would want to accomplish as chief is for you guys (students) to feel that the police are approachable,” she said. “In a college environment, students sometimes feel like they don’t want to or can’t talk to the police. I’d like that to change.”

Working with student government was also an important component of a campus law enforcement job, O’Connor said.

She also expressed her positive impression of the UW campus as a workplace.

“Your campus is beautiful, absolutely gorgeous,” she said. »

Robert Karnofski

Robert Karnofski, one of the two candidates for the position of police chief of the UWPD, met with students in an open forum in Schmitz Hall last night.

Karnofski is the assistant police chief with the Auburn, Wash., police department. He received a Bachelor’s degree in criminology from Fresno State University and has served at the Auburn department since 1981. Karnofski became assistant chief in 2005.

Students at the forum expressed concerns regarding the relationship between police and students.

Sabrina Fields, a co-chair for the Community Advisory Board, said she was concerned about the police’s interaction with minority students.

“For students I know, they haven’t necessarily had the best experiences with the UWPD,” Fields said.

Karnofski responded to concerns about UWPD-student relations.

“I think that cultural diversity classes and interaction with people in the community are very important,” he said. “It’s important that these interactions are positive so that you don’t just see the blue of the uniform — you see the individual, and vice versa.”

Karnofski said working at the Auburn department has given him experience dealing with diverse cultures and groups of people. He would bring the skills with him to the UW, he said. The Auburn department has an American Indian reservation within its municipality, and he outlined the outreach work the department has done within the tribal community.

He also talked about his experience working in a college environment. Green River Community College also falls under the jurisdiction of the Auburn police.

“At that campus, there is a large foreign Asian population that lives near campus, and they have been the victims of robberies. We’ve done a lot of outreach for safety awareness,” Karnofski said. “There are some cultures where calling the police is the last thing you do, so we conducted educational outreach to overcome those culturally based perceptions about police.”

Karnofski said moving from a municipality to a campus police department does present some unique challenges.

“My agency is call-driven. Your job is to respond to calls. In a university, it’s all about creating a safe environment,” he said.

Fewer calls mean more opportunities for outreach and community-focused, proactive policing, he said.

“That’s part of what makes this job appealing. Everyone gets into this job because they want to help people, but some get bogged down just chasing down calls,” he said.

Karnofski would work hard to ensure a positive relationship between students and the police, he said.

“My expectation (for the UWPD) is that we treat everyone with respect and dignity,” he said.

Students with questions for Karnofski can pose them at an open forum for students on April 17 in the HUB.

[Reach reporter Siv Prince at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]