Campus Safety Announces 2010 Director of the Year Finalists

Congratulations to all of our top nominees!

Some of this year’s finalists’ built their departments from scratch or turned around their agency’s finances. Others developed parking revenue strategies or improved labor and delivery room security. One adopted green initiatives,  while another headed the response to a severe weather emergency.

Here’s the breakdown of the finalists, as well as some of their achievements:

Jimmy Brown, Chief of Police, California State University, San Bernardino

  • Efforts led to a 15 percent drop in property crimes on campus
  • Implemented environmentally friendly solutions via the adoption of near-paperless computer aided dispatch, records management and memo systems, as well as the purchase of a T3 Motion Machine
  • Department has been awarded approximately $300,000 in grants to purchase interoperable radios and secure critical campus infrastructure

View Brown’s photo gallery

Paul Chapa, Chief of Police, Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas

  • Increased funding for staff training by 70 percent
  • Revised the hiring process to include extensive background investigations
  • Certified all nonsworn officers as state certified security officers, which provided them with classroom and tactical training

View Chapa’s photo gallery

Greg Ferrell, Assistant Chief and Director, The Ohio State University, Wooster, Ohio

  • Responsible for response to the Sept. 16, 2010 EF-2 tornado that struck the campus
  • Personally directed law enforcement search operations until the incident command was assumed with the Wooster City fire chief
  • Located temporary housing for campus police operations

View Ferrell’s photo gallery

Gerald Robert Harkins, Associate Vice President for Campus Safety and Security, University of Texas, Austin

  • Responsible for the planning and management that led to the successful response to the Sept. 28, 2010 active shooter incident on campus
  • Hosted an active shooter tabletop exercise to solidify responses and procedures
  • Assembled a committee to explore how suicides could be mitigated, which resulted in the prevention of three deaths

View Harkins’ photo gallery

John Hunkiar, Chief of Safety, Security and Emergency Management, Leon County Schools, Tallahassee, Fla.

  • Formed and built a sworn district agency
  • Opened district’s 24-hour monitoring/emergency operations center
  • Improved access control at more than 50 schools

View Hunkiar’s photo gallery

Charles Hurley, Chief of Police , Miami-Dade Schools Police Department

  • Within six months of him taking over the chief position, his department was operating in the black for the first time since 1957
  • Partnered with local judicial circuit to provide crisis intervention training to district police officers
  • Instituted a traffic enforcement strategy that reduced by nearly half the number of traffic accidents involving student pedestrians

View Hurley’s photo gallery

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About the Author

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Robin has been covering the security and campus law enforcement industries since 1998 and is a specialist in school, university and hospital security, public safety and emergency management, as well as emerging technologies and systems integration. She joined CS in 2005 and has authored award-winning editorial on campus law enforcement and security funding, officer recruitment and retention, access control, IP video, network integration, event management, crime trends, the Clery Act, Title IX compliance, sexual assault, dating abuse, emergency communications, incident management software and more. Robin has been featured on national and local media outlets and was formerly associate editor for the trade publication Security Sales & Integration. She obtained her undergraduate degree in history from California State University, Long Beach.

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