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
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
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
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
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
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
