Amy Rock (00:00): Hi everyone, and thank you for joining us for this episode of the Campus Safety Voices podcast. My name is Amy Rock. I'm campus safety's executive editor, and here today with me is Dr. Jennifer Griffin, chief of Police and VP of Public Safety at Temple University in Philadelphia. And Jennifer is a 2025 campus Safety Director of the Year finalist. And if you're not familiar, the Campus Safety Director of the Year program, it's actually now in its 18th year and it recognizes leaders in hospital, university or school security, law enforcement and or emergency management. So today we'll discuss some of Jennifer's endeavors and accomplishments and we hope that some of you can garner some new knowledge that you can take back to your campus from this discussion. So now the first question, you established something called the park and walk policing strategy following a public safety audit. Can you elaborate on what the strategy is and also any changes you've seen as a result of it?

Jennifer Griffin (00:57): Sure. Well, first, thank you very much for the opportunity. It's exciting to be recognized and to be a finalist. I would say one of the things that we really try to do here at Temple is we're looking for a lot of different strategies. So layering in safety, whether it be with our personnel, with our different types of staffing or our technology and equipment with cameras and artificial intelligence overlays our access controls as well as our training and strategy. And then using communication to make sure that our community knows about the resources and what we're doing and how they can be a great partner with us. And so the Park and Walks was a initiative that structured that the officers who were in cars, so we have police officers, we have security officers, we have dispatchers, and then we also have contracted security officers as well over 350 that we work with.

And so the park and walks was an opportunity to get our police officers who ride around in the patrol cars out of the car, engaging with the community. We have officers that also are on bike patrol, so they're engaging naturally just by virtue of being on the sidewalk, pulling up to locations and they're easy to communicate with people, but sometimes there's that feeling, especially when officers are in the car, that it's hard to engage with people and businesses. So the park and walks requires that the police officers who are in that are patrolling in the patrol car within the patrol zone to get out of their car for 90 minutes of their 12 hour day and they can break it up. We actually encourage them, don't do it all at once, break it up throughout your day, get out of the car. They give over, dispatch their location, and then they go into our buildings, they engage our faculty, students and visitors on the sidewalk.

They'll do business place checks as well. So we have a lot of restaurants and retail in the area. They'll go in and engage. And the outcome from it has been overwhelmingly positive. First, we increase our positive engagements with people, which was part of the reason that we wanted them to have that opportunity. But the response back from our students as well as the business community saying, we love seeing our police officers come into our business and just check in with us. It gives us an opportunity to first understand what know the officer and for them to understand if we have anything going on or we have questions. So on the officer standpoint, they enjoy it as well because it gets 'em out of the car, it gets them talking to our students and our visitors and our faculty, and it gets 'em into the businesses. Some businesses we're at more frequently just by nature of the business and maybe the needs that they have, but then there are a lot of businesses that we don't have as much contact with. So this gives the officers really an opportunity to get into all businesses, to talk to people and get to know them.

Amy Rock (03:49): If you're spending all your time in your car, someone who's walking on a campus, you almost feel like you're just being watched versus protected. So getting out and interacting is a completely different feeling.

Jennifer Griffin (04:02): And it also falls into our entire university. Our policing strategy of community policing is, it's just not a unit that does it, but it's everybody involved. And so this gives the officers really a wonderful opportunity to get out of the car, engage with community. I mean, some people are here on campus, they might be here for an open house or orientation. They're only going to be here one day until their student shows up a couple months later. And it gives them a great opportunity to see the police officers on a human level engaging with people and serving the community in a really positive manner.

Amy Rock (04:39): Also, following the audit, you helped create the safety partnership zone with the Philadelphia Police Department. Can you discuss this partnership and its benefits as well?

Jennifer Griffin (04:48): So the safety partnership isn't just with, it was one of the recommendations under the 21 CP Solutions audit that we had done. It had over 68 recommendations with sub recommendations, very comprehensive of the entire university and a lot of other colleges and universities. We are in the city, so it's just not us in a rural area on our own. We're ingrained in the fabric of the city. And so it makes sense that we also have this partnership zone relationship with all of our city partners, with our community partners. It's just not a public safety piece. But there's also a really, I would say if you're looking at it, it's a 50 50 split between law enforcement and resources, like maybe license and inspections, sanitation, and then there's the community piece of it where we're engaging with neighborhood associations, the landlords who own the buildings that a lot of our students live in off of campus, but within our patrol zone as well as block captains and things like that.

It's a great opportunity for everybody to come together, talk about what the issues are, what resources can we utilize to deal with these problems or issues, and then have that relationship that we can work towards it. So we had all of these different relationships before, but it was really bringing everybody to the table at one time to move those initiatives or maybe work on challenges together. So we've kind of continued to grow any different project. It starts as one thing and then we've continued to morph it into something that really serves our temple community better. And so I lead that initiative with another vice president who works. I primarily handle the public safety resource side for type of quality of life issues and then work with student affairs if we have anything that's student related. And then my counterpart, she really works as the engagement specialist for the university and the community, working with all of those community partners to give them a voice in any challenges. And then we meet together to kind of work through, okay, what do we need to do? How do we serve this group? What resources do we have? And then we move forward together.

Amy Rock (07:03): It really just shows how unique each type of campus' safety plan needs to be because being in a city has its challenges. Obviously if crime were to spill over or whatever it be, but then you have that partnership with the city police. But I think of my campus, I went to a big campus, UMass Amherst, which is in a very isolated area where it has its benefits because you don't have, obviously it has crime, but you're not in a big inner city area where it might be more commonplace, but then you're also not necessarily having that close of a relationship with the local police department. So it's also different.

Jennifer Griffin (07:47): And I mean that's the great thing about so many of the organizations for colleges and universities that we all are very different, but the mission's all the same. Our purpose is still to serve our students, our faculty staff, the community at large. And so the partnership zone really has helped us really wrap our arms around this is our community. How do we better serve them? How can we leverage all of our resources? As you're aware, law enforcement right now is not seeing a massive influx of people coming into the field. And we're also losing people through retirements and people just going into other fields at a higher number than we've seen in past years. And so we have to be really thoughtful and intentional with how we are using our staffing as well. And so it makes sense that the city of Philadelphia Police department and us are working hand in hand on different issues. And because we're somewhat unique in that we police outside of our boundary of the campus and we go into the neighborhood, you really have to have that strong relationship so that you know what everybody's doing if there are crimes, and you have to leverage our investigators or their investigators. So it really creates a great opportunity for communication and collaboration throughout the community.

Amy Rock (09:04): Do you naturally lose staff, and I don't mean lose because it's obviously an opportunity for them, but some of your police officers to the Philly police, and I'm just asking that, I spoke to another finalist who was located in a big city and they said sometimes it's either not the perfect fit or whatever the reason is, if they want to be part of a bigger department, they having that close relationship with the department kind of makes the transition more seamless for everyone involved. Is that similar for you?

Jennifer Griffin (09:37): Sure, and I think this is probably very common, at least when I talk to other AVPs and VPs universities. For a lot of people it's a starting point and sometimes an ending point. So it's a great opportunity, especially for students that are coming out of college and they want to go into policing, but they're not exactly sure the right fit yet, but they feel comfortable in a university environment. And so it's a great place to start because you're engaging with people that are similar in your age, what a lot of the challenges are, the area. And then we get a lot of people that come back later, they've had a career somewhere else, they've done 20 years at another police department, and then they decide, I have a young adult in my house, they're going to go to college, and the universities offer a great benefit for tuition remission or free college for you and your dependents.

So we do see crossover between some of our younger officers starting here and then maybe going to another department, Philadelphia police Department. And then we also see people at the back end of a career come back to a university environment. So you see a little bit of everything. I think that's the great thing about being in this environment is there's a lot of relationships and they get to see other types of policing. And I never feel badly if somebody comes to our department and they do it work a couple years and then they realize I want to go somewhere else that has this tactical SWAT unit, we don't offer that, or I want to go into a homicide unit. We don't have that either. So I think it's great that people can start off here, they get a great experience, maybe they get their own education. If they haven't gotten an undergraduate, they can work on it while they're working here, and then they find another agency that better suits their needs.

Amy Rock (11:22): Yeah, I mean, that's great from a safety perspective. And also just as students having a wide variety of people from different walks of life, you don't want all 22 fresh face kids who might have a different perspective on life than say, someone who's been in the policing industry for a while and are in their forties or fifties. It's just great in any type of job really to have a wide array of people with different life experiences.

Jennifer Griffin (11:46): Absolutely. And definitely I think I like to think you have to be a special person to work in and colleges, you're not just a police officer, you're a parent. Sometimes you're a friend, you're a mentor. You really have to be a well-rounded, articulate person to work in the environment because our students are coming to college right now with a lot of challenges that we didn't face 25 years ago when we went to college. And so I think it really serves our community when we have a diverse pool of police officers to deal with the challenges that we face.

Amy Rock (12:23): Absolutely. Now, one more question. Can you elaborate on the student Safety Advisory committee? How did that come about? Who was involved and what are some positive impacts that you've seen on campus?

Jennifer Griffin (12:35): Sure. So when I first got here two and a half years ago, I was, my first 90 days, I called my Listen and learn period. And I was going to every meeting trying to meet with every group, everything from faculty and staff down to every, we have over 300 plus organizations here at the university. I was trying to get to all these meetings and meet our students, create relationships, and then I was still getting emails from parents or emails from students about like, Hey, can we look at the bus route? It doesn't go by my house. So there was so many opportunities where I was like, I want to be able to have a group that brings problems, their issues and their concerns directly to us so that I have that kind of thumb on the pulse of what's going on. And I also wanted the ability to be able to directly communicate with leaders within the universe, within our student population.

And so it was a natural fit that we set up the Student Safety Advisory Committee. It's a very diverse group. There's representation from Temple student Government, from our fraternity sororities, from a lot of different organizations. We frequently have our different media groups, community within the university attend the meetings, and then we also advertise for open positions if people are interested. So it's a very diverse group. We meet on a monthly basis. Myself, my deputy chiefs, the captain of our engagement unit, as well as numerous other people within public safety. Our Office of Emergency Management represents in the group as well. And we just listen to our students and say, what are your concerns? What are your needs? We share information with them. We've made so many changes to public safety based on the feedback that we've received from this group. We were doing, we have a safety app, just like all universities to send out different alerts and things like that.

And they were saying, we get the emails, but sometimes we don't know, is it really important? Do I have to look at, is it really not important? Can I bypass it? And so we color coded our emails that go out so that people knew, Hey, there's traffic is shut down on this roadway today for an event that's a green, or there might be a more important alert that they have to pay attention to that is red, that including just information on if we had a crime and they were like, they have questions about it, we explain the process. They've become amazing partners for us sharing information. We're all on the same social media platforms, so they're sharing our PSAs and our safety information. They're sending us things and being a part of it too. So the partnership and the relationship has been amazing and continues to grow. And then we refresh the group every year so it's not the same people every year. And we open it up to the university at wide, anybody who's interested.

We have students from our law, we have a law enforcement and criminal justice group that we do public speaking for. And we have come in and do tours. We have representation from them. But we also, we got some new technology. We got a TI Trainer, which is a simulator that has 900 scenarios. And it's kind of like the books, remember, pick your adventure that you can make it go in a lot of different directions. So the instructors, as the officers are doing it, if they're doing it well and they're deescalating and they're using verbal skills and they're doing all the safe things they have to do, it goes in one direction. But if they're not doing as well or they're missing different questions that they should be asking, they can send it in another direction.

And so we've had numerous student organizations come in and use the TI Trainer. It also has some games in it as well. So there's some shooting games and things like that, like carnival games. But it's been amazing to have the students come in and do the scenarios and then stand back and be like, oh my gosh, that was so hard. I felt so awkward asking this person questions. Or this person was in mental health crisis or had an altered state and I didn't know how to interact with them. Or the person hurry up and took their hands out of their pocket. And I use lethal force because I was in fear for my safety. So just having them come in and be around the officers do ridealongs, give us feedback, look at the technology we're using has provided a great understanding for us of the challenges that they're facing, but it's also given them a peek behind the curtain on what it is to be a police officer on a university campus.

Amy Rock (17:08): A couple years ago when you said the ride along, it triggered something in my brain. I think a couple years ago we covered your temple. The DPS has a student ride along program. I don't know if I'm using the right words for it, but I remember thinking, that's really cool because like you said, it kind of lets them get an inside look. I think it said it's typically people who are interested in law enforcement, but it kind of brings the two together, letting students see that side of it, and then also it could potentially get them interested when they graduate in joining the department.

Jennifer Griffin (17:41): Absolutely. We created the ride along program primarily for our students, but we also have adults, faculty and staff ride along as well. But really to give them, this is a great career. There's a lot of positives in being a police officer. There's a lot of personal fulfillment you can get from this. And for a generation and a population that really in many ways wants to find ways to make things better, this is a great job and it gives them a great opportunity to engage with a police officer. The majority of our kids will never have any interaction with a police officer while they're here on campus. So it's a great way. We're trying to get into the classrooms as much as we can. We're getting them into the cars, giving tours. We do a ton of public service. And so we've also had the students from our advisory group and from the community, from our student athletes assisting. We just did a 2000 book donation to elementary school during the Read Across America Week. We did two schools. We do a holiday party, which we have students come and work at around the holiday time, giving out toys and running activities. And then we do a lot of tabling events where we love to have students there as well.

Amy Rock (18:56): It's amazing. I think back to when I was in college, it's just so different now. I mean, those things could have been going on and I just was totally oblivious to them. But I think that just the last 10, 15 years, it's just completely blown up in a good way in being more involved.

Jennifer Griffin (19:13): And I think overall it has created a really warm feeling on campus, for the most part, for our officers feel really connected and feel good about engaging with our students. And then the students feel really comfortable and open to share the challenges and the issues that they might be seeing or dealing with. I mean, we like to say that safety is everybody's responsibility and our students are a great partner as well as our fact. I just did a presentation for our faculty senate, I think two weeks ago. We did it at night, so we also included our partners from the international campuses, from Japan and Rome, and it just really creates this feeling that people care. We're here to help regardless of what the issue is, and that the students and our faculty feel safe to bring us issues, which is really important.