Less than a month after a deadly off-campus traffic stop, the University of Cincinnati has named a new leadership team to reform its policing practices. Tana Weingartner of member station WVXU in Cincinnati reports.
UC’s police chief now has a former assistant Cincinnati police Chief, the man who led the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence, and a top policing expert to help guide his department. New Director of Public Safety Jim Whalen says UC will create a plan similar to Cincinnati’s collaborative policing agreement.
“When you’re in an urban environment, oftentimes the police are the center of attention… In an academic environment like this, we need to be almost invisible. When you turn on the light switch you don’t think about the miles of wires that makes the light come on. That’s the way safety needs to be in a campus environment and around the campus environment. And that’s what we’ll strive to do.”
UC’s new VP for Safety and Reform, Robin Engel, says UCPD has had success in reducing violent crime and property crime on and around campus during the last two years. However, she says they weren’t looking at officer performance.
“And that was a miss-step… and it’s a step that we’re now correcting moving forward.”
