Bridging the Gap Podcast

[00:00:01] Kelly: You ready?

[00:00:02] Darryn: Boom. I'm always ready. I'm always ready. I am so excited. Season two. That's right. Season two was standing on the bridge of gapping this whole thing between community and policing, I love it. Bridging the Gap. I am your host, Darryn Chenault. Officer Darren Chenault. And I'm here with my co-host

[00:00:22] Kelly: Kelly Cantwell. And did I not say he was going to be loud?

[00:00:25] Darryn: I am loud. I love being loud. I have my AC with us today. AC stands for Assistant Chief Dudley Smith. How are you doing today, Dudley?

[00:00:34] Dudley: Very good, thank you.

[00:00:35] Darryn: Great, great, great, great. I told you. I get excited when I do stuff like this. And I have some special friends from UC student government. So I'm going to start at the far end. Go ahead and introduce yourself and let everybody know who you are and what you do.

[00:00:47] Zohair: Yup, yup, yup. My name is Zohair Siddiqui. I'm an incoming senior at the University of Cincinnati, and I'm our student body vice president.

[00:00:54] Darryn: I love it.

[00:00:55] Wilaini: Hi, everyone. My name is Wilaini Alicea. I'm a also a rising fourth year, and I'm the student body president.

[00:01:03] Darryn: That's awesome. I'm gonna go ahead and give the mic over to our assistant chief here. Little background on you, where you've been, how long you've been with the university.

[00:01:11] Dudley: Sure. I have been here since 2001.

So I'm coming up on my 25th year being at the university after I graduated from UC with my undergrad.

So between being a student and working here, I have actually been on this campus for 30 years. Plus my parents worked here at various times. So I kind of grew up on the campus and I've been a Bearcat pretty much my entire life.

[00:01:37] Wilaini: Awesome.

[00:01:38] Darryn: That's good stuff right there. Good stuff. I know. The game is going to. Or we're going to flip the game a little bit. Kelly and I always do the questions. This time we're going to flip it over to you guys to ask the questions to us and hopefully we answer them in a great way that you guys get excited about. Yeah. Did I say that right, Kelly? Because I see you smiling at me.

[00:01:56] Kelly: Darryn, that was perfect. Thank you.

[00:01:58] Darryn: I know it was.

[00:01:59] Zohair: All right, you guys ready to get started then?

[00:02:00] Darryn: Yes. Do it. 

[00:02:01] Kelly: We are ready.

[00:02:02] Zohair: Well, I guess a good first question then would be kind of talking about, who is UCPD? And then also, how is it different from the Cincinnati Police Department that we have?

[00:02:12] Dudley: It's a great question. So we are our own law enforcement agency.

Our primary jurisdiction is all the property that is owned and controlled by the board of trustees of the University of Cincinnati.

So we are a fully sworn and trained law enforcement agency. We go through the exact same training that any other police officer in the state of Ohio has to go through, which is usually about a six month police academy. There's a training program and then we have continuing education stuff that we have to do every year to keep our certification up. So all of that stuff we have, every officer goes through all of that. Not only do we have sworn officers, but we have our own standalone 911 center, one of only three in Hamilton County.

So it's Hamilton County, Cincinnati Police Department, and our department has their own 911 system center.

We also have some uniformed security officers that are not sworn. However, they are there as a uniform presence. They can assist us when it comes if we need to have a little extra hands on deck kind of a thing. They work some details for us.

You'll see them a lot at some of the regional campuses.

And then they also do things like motorist assists and things like that.

We also have as part of public safety, we have an emergency management section.

So they kind of help do business continuity for the university, come up with plans for making sure that the daily functions of the university can occur even though something is disrupting, could be a power outage, it could be a water thing, it could be a storm, something.

They also help us control and manage the large events that are on campus.

So we're a lot like Cincinnati police or any other police agency. However, our focus is here on campus.

Did that answer?

[00:04:13] Zohair: Yeah, definitely. And I think sometimes one of the confusions can be is what counts as campus. How do we know what's owned by the Board of Trustees in terms of property? And how do we know who to call, whether that's the Cincinnati Police Department or UCPD.

[00:04:27] Dudley: Yep. So that is a very complicated area.

We constantly struggle because there's. The university has property that kind of all over the, the really Hamilton County and Clermont County. Right. So we have the Clermont campus. Right. And then throughout, mostly around the uptown area here we have the main campus, which is, you know, where most people would associate the university of being, you know, between Calhoun, Martin Luther King, Jefferson and Clifton Avenue is the main campus. But we also have the medical campus over around the hospital, which is the medical science building and the pharmacy college and areas over there. But then there's also like the observatory out in, which actually lies in the middle of, I think it's District 2 of the Cincinnati Police Department. And then we have like Center Hill, which is over on the up off of like North Bend Road area.

And then we have the Blue Ash campus.

Sprinkled throughout the area are a lot of little individual properties here and there that the university also is responsible for. So we will take reports for things that occur there.

But probably the question where you're trying to get the most information is if I'm a student and I live off campus, who do I call?

[00:05:50] Zohair: Yeah, right, exactly.

[00:05:51] Dudley: So you can always call us.

It may not be our jurisdiction, but we will always be there to help.

We will either respond, we will always respond if we have somebody available, but if it's not our jurisdiction, we'll be there and we'll help you get the right resources.

So we have. There's some block leases, for example. Right.

So those are not university owned properties, but there's an agreement that the university has with the property owner where they lease that out to students.

So if something happens in a block lease, for example, it's not our jurisdiction, but you can always call us. The CPD will respond and do like an offense report if an offense occurs. We'll be there to help provide other resources and make sure that what the student needs, they can get as best we can.

[00:06:41] Zohair: Right, Cool. And does that work vice versa as well? On the Cincinnati Police Department side, what does your partnership with them look like?

[00:06:48] Dudley: We have a very good working relationship with the Cincinnati Police Department. So quite typically, if they get called to an area around campus that involves a student and they know that it's a student, they'll probably call us anyway because they know that there are resources that we can help get that student.

The flip side of that is also sometimes they would defer to us to handle the situation.

They kind of have the same mindset that we do a lot of times of, let's face it, students are exploring, right.

They're especially newer students to the area. It's maybe their first time living away from home, maybe not always making the wisest of decisions. And if they cross the line, you know, Cincinnati Police, they really either have to make an arrest or they have to let it go. Sometimes you don't want to do either one of them, right.

That's where we can come in. Because there's things that we can do through student code of conduct where, you know, maybe it's not, you know, worth taking somebody to jail and ruining the rest of their life and creating a criminal record, but at the same time, it can't go unnoticed and unchecked. So we have that kind of middle ground where we can bridge that gap, so to speak, where we can help get, you know, a relatively easier solution, if you will.

You know, we look at our role in the university. If you look at the university as in general, why. Why does the university exist? Provide education and conduct research, right.

In order to do that, you have to have a safe environment.

[00:08:31] Zohair: Yeah.

[00:08:33] Dudley: We're here to also provide an education.

[00:08:36] Darryn: Right.

[00:08:37] Dudley: So we want to take the. Those type of opportunities and use those as a learning opportunity.

We can do that a little bit easier going through student code of conduct rather than go through the criminal justice system. So we would prefer to do that.

Sometimes we can't. We don't have a choice. It has to go through the criminal justice system.

But a lot of times we just try to do the best we can, making it a learning opportunity and going through student code of conduct. 

[00:09:01] Kelly: I think.

[00:09:03] Darryn: Go ahead I'm sorry.

[00:09:03] Kelly: I was going to say just to add a little bit to what Dudley touched on earlier for, like, knowing when to call UC Police versus Cincinnati Police. I think one important thing that I say when I speak to students about this is at the end of the day, you can always call 911 and they will get you to whatever agency you need, rather than, you know, students worrying about, like, ooh, who do I call in this situation? I don't know. You can always call 911.

And if you call 911, even if you're standing on campus, if you call 911 on your cell phone, you're not going to come to our dispatch center. So you're still going to end up at the city or possibly the county, or allegedly on a random hill, maybe Northern Kentucky. But, you know, you just let them know your location and they will get you to the right agency.

So I think, you know, just call someone and, you know, we work very closely together. We will get you to the person that you need.

[00:10:03] Zohair: Perfect.

[00:10:04] Wilaini: Yeah.

[00:10:04] Dudley: It's very easy for Cincinnati's communication center and our communication center to transfer 911 calls. So if you do call 911 and it goes to the city of Cincinnati and it's not their jurisdiction, it actually is ours, they can very easily transfer it over to us. Our dispatcher will then handle it and take care of it from there. Dispatch officers appropriately.

[00:10:25] Zohair: Awesome.

[00:10:26] Wilaini: And kind of on the same page, you kind of talked about those situations, especially, like, at night when a student might be feeling unsafe on campus or.

Excuse me, sorry.

Like, maybe a little bit off of campus. How should a student know what resources are available, especially for partying safe. Or maybe. Maybe they're living off of campus and something happens at night or they're walking home in one of the business districts.

What resources are available for those students?

[00:11:03] Dudley: You want to take first shot at it?

[00:11:05] Kelly: Sure. So I'm the big.

I'm the person who pushes the most for our campus safety app in the department. That's a lot of what I do with the communications that I push out.

So the thing that I. Two things that I like to highlight about the Bearcat Guardian app, which is our department's campus safety app.

The first is the man, and I'm blanking on what it is.

You can use it. You can send your location to a friend or to public safety. So if you send it to, you can send it to anyone your cell phone contacts and it'll text them with a link and they can watch you as you're walking. Or even theoretically, you could use it in an Uber. You don't have to be walking, but they can follow along as you're going to your location. So you can put in the time up to four hours.

There are notes in there, so you could say, I'm walking to the library or I'm walking back to my residence hall or something to let the person you're sending this to know where you're going.

And then it'll prompt you, if you don't turn off your safety timer in time and be like, hey, do you want to turn this off? And if your safety timer doesn't get turned off in time, it will let your friend or family know that you haven't turned it off, they can check in on you. If you choose public safety as your, they call it "guardian." If you choose public safety as your guardian, which you could choose a friend and public safety, or you could just pick one.

The dispatchers aren't going to watch you as you're walking to wherever you're going, but they will receive an alert if you do not turn off your safety timer with your location, anything you put in your safety profile. So maybe if you had like a medical condition that might play a role in why you haven't turned off your safety timer, we would get that information.

It allows the dispatcher to attempt to contact you and make sure you're okay. And if they can't get ahold of you at that point, they could reach out to one of our officers on patrol and try to find you.

And then our officer would have all of your safety profile information. So your name, your vehicle, your local address, medical conditions, your emergency contacts, they get all that information in that situation so that we have all that and we can do whatever we can to assist you.

The other thing I love about the Guardian app is it allows you to essentially text a dispatcher. So there's a chat feature. You can go in, you can send photos, you can share locations.

You should always call 911 first. But the chat feature is a really great backup. If you're in a situation that's not an emergency, or if you're in a situation where making a phone call to 911 would escalate the situation, you can use the chat feature.

It's similar to the safety timer. It sends a really loud blaring noise on the dispatcher's computer. They are not going to miss it. Um, and then you can talk back and forth with them. It also includes an anonymous feature. So if you're uncomfortable letting dispatch know, then they will.

You can send it anonymously too. We would love to have your contact information. That way we can ask follow up questions if we have them. But if the option is telling us versus not telling us, we would like the information.

[00:14:25] Darryn: Yeah, just to chime in too. I mean, when in doubt, call the police department. I know a lot of times we get this, we go out and talk to UC students. Just call us if something's not right. You know, I had kids go through the University of Cincinnati. If they felt like something was going on or they were concerned about something, call us. That's the easiest way to put it. As a police officer, we just always like to tell our kids just to be safe.

[00:14:51] Zohair: Yeah, that makes sense. I guess the question that I had then here is, in a hypothetical, which I think often happens with college students is, you know, you lose your phone, you're outside, you're partying late night, and your phone gets lost. You don't have access to the Guardian app, but you still gotta get home. What steps might a student take in a situation like that? To make sure that they get home safely and are contacting the right people to do so.

[00:15:14] Dudley: So if you're on campus, there are blue help phones all over campus.

There's a lot of them. So hit one of those that rings right into our dispatch center.

And so it's manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Somebody will always be there to answer that help phone. You can get some guidance there. They can send somebody to you if you need it. They can help you find your way if you happen to be lost Anything, it's full service. Help phone off campus is a little trickier. And that's probably where you're gonna have to just rely on a friend or borrow somebody's phone, something like that. But anywhere on campus, there's blue help phones indoors, outdoors, there's various places around campus. There's area of rescue assistance.

You can actually, I believe every elevator on campus has. You can hit the button there. And it brings in us too.

[00:16:09] Zohair: So for a student that does use one of those resources where they call UCPD, what can they expect?

Sometimes it can be intimidating for students to have to call a police officer and they don't know what exactly that process will look like, so they're afraid to do it. What can you kind of walk through? What exactly would happen from the moment somebody calls UCPD up until, I guess, getting home safely?

[00:16:29] Dudley: Sure.

I would love to say that it's service with a smile is what you're going to get. However, the circumstances will always dictate what the response is, right.

[00:16:39] Dudley: So if it's something as simple as hey, I need a ride or I'm lost, or can you help me find whatever those are easy. We'll send an officer as quick as we can and help you out.

Things that are more emergent. It really depends on the situation. Right. So we always have to respond to the information that's given to us. So the more information that we get when we get called, the better our response will be. The more appropriate that response will be.

I don't know if that helps clarify a little bit there, but it's really hard to say. It really depends on the situation.

[00:17:15] Zohair: Yeah, no, that makes sense. That makes sense.

[00:17:17] Wilaini: So kind of my question, this is just a question that I kind of thought of when a student might be feeling unsafe, whether it's like during the day on campus or they might feel unsafe, like walking out to their car. Do you guys provide any resources or maybe like escorting just in case a student might be feeling unsafe on campus or there might be like a separate situation, whether it's like something from home infringing on their experience on campus, or maybe they had a bad experience with a roommate.

How do you guys handle those types of situations?

[00:17:57] Dudley: So there's a couple different ways that we can handle that. If it's an ongoing thing where, let's say there's a history between the victim and an offender, right.

We have a crime victim service coordinator in our department that can help create a safety plan.

She has a lot of resources throughout the university that can help get classes changed, get room assignments changed. If it's something that would, you know, help the situation, if that will help alleviate the problem, she has all kinds of resources that will be able to help move that process along. She'll also be able to help you get things like protection orders, civil protection orders, temporary protection orders, things like that.

If you happen to become a victim of a crime, she'll help you navigate through what that court process looks like, too. As a victim, she'll make sure that you have all the information going into your court case, what to expect, other types of victim services that are available to you.

If it's something as simple as I don't feel safe walking to my car, always call us. Always call us.

We may not be able to respond right away. It depends on what's going on.

Because, you know, we're responsible for a very large area, actually, and a lot of people, you know, our population here is kind of like a small city. So, you know, we don't always have somebody available, but as soon as we do have somebody available, we'll get to you and we'll help you out.

[00:19:25] Wilaini: That's awesome.

[00:19:26] Kelly: And just to add a little bit to our victim services that Dudley talked about, because I think this is a resource that students don't know that we have, but I think it's very valuable.

You do not have to be a victim of a crime that occurred on campus to utilize the resources. She's worked with students who have been victims of crime in a different county

If you are a student and you have been a victim of crime, you can work with her, even if it's not in the county, on campus.

And you can also speak to her before you've decided if you want to make a police report and she can talk you through that process. She's not a confidential resource, and that's important to know. She's not like counseling services, but she can work with you and help you decide if you even want to make a police report.

So she's, I think, a very valuable resource to our students, faculty, staff that I would love if more people knew about.

[00:20:19] Wilaini: Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome.

[00:20:20] Darryn: I kind of go back to. Correct me if I'm wrong, we are the third largest police agency in Hamilton county, correct? Is that...

[00:20:28] Dudley: Yes.

[00:20:28] Darryn: I believe I got that information when I came over. I've been with the university for six or seven years now, and we were talking about safety.

You get into that atmosphere where it's dark and you, you need help or something's wrong, you want to go to a well lit area as well. Don't stay in that area. Make sure you get around people. Go to the front desk, do things of that nature. Just don't sit there and wait for us to come. We always kind of like our assistant chief just said, make sure you tell us all the information and get to an area where people see you, lights are on. So, you know, that way you feel a little bit more comfortable as well.

[00:21:02] Wilaini: Right?

[00:21:02] Zohair: That's perfect. That's perfect. Another question that another student had mentioned was, what are some misconceptions that you feel students have about UCPD? I guess we talked a little bit about some of the resources that you provide and wish that some students knew about. But sometimes students can have a certain perception of our police department.

And how can we work to break those down? Obviously there's things like these, but what other things would you wish that students knew about UCPD?

[00:21:29] Dudley: I think there's probably two things that stand out right off the top of my head. One is we're not here to ruin people's lives.

Again, kind of going back to what I mentioned earlier, we understand the role of the university and we understand our role within the university.

We want people to use this as a learning environment. We want to be part of that learning environment.

We want to do things to take what could be a bad situation, try to make it a little bit more palatable and make it a learning experience and not ruin somebody's life by creating a criminal record, right?

[00:22:03] Zohair: Yeah.

[00:22:03] Dudley: So that's number one. Number two is quite often we get faced with things like protests.

And it could be a protest or it could be somebody exercising their First Amendment right.

We've all been on campus before. We've seen people like street preachers that come onto campus. We see, right, right to life protest, things that are going on.

Not everybody agrees with the message that's being delivered. Right. But we don't have the opportunity, we don't have the ability to pick a side.

So we have to walk that very fine line of protecting everybody's rights.

Just like the person that is standing on the steps spewing what people determine or what people feel is hate speech and directed at them, they have that right to do that. As egregious and as distasteful as it might be, they have that right to do that. We have to protect their right to express their First Amendment rights. Just like the person at the bottom of the steps yelling back at them, we have to protect their rights as well, right.

So we often get stuck in the middle. And sometimes the optics of that make it look like we're picking sides. We're really not. We're there to make sure that everybody, number one, everybody is safe and number two, that everybody is able to express their first amendment rights.

[00:23:23] Zohair: Yeah, that's great.

[00:23:24] Wilaini: Yeah, especially just kind of like letting them know ahead of time if there is going to be something that's happening. I know that we've had students kind of ask like, if I'm going to be expressing my first amendment rights, like, how do I do that? And making sure to let you guys know is also a really great resource, especially just making sure that you guys are there, whether it's just numbers, like making sure that you guys have the right amount of people there and like an expected number. So when you guys kind of are let know that that's going to be happening on campus, what kind of like safety procedures do you guys follow and what does that look like?

[00:24:06] Dudley: So that's a good question. We work very closely with student affairs folks, so a lot of the student groups will organize stuff through student affairs office. Depending on what the situation is, where it is, time of day, how many people are going to be expected, all that kind of stuff. We may assign an officer or two or more, depending on what the situation is.

Again, every situation is going to be a little bit different in how we handle that and how we respond to it. A lot of times, you know, we can have an officer just kind of walk by, make sure everything's okay. Other times we'll have a full detail on it.

By detail, I mean off duty officers that come in and work, or we'll pull off a staff in to assign them to the area, things like that.

But it really depends on the situation, where it is, what the topic is, type, you know, is there going to be a high profile person there, for example, are they collecting money? There's a lot of variables that kind of go into our response to it.

So it's kind of one of those things where we have to kind of do a little bit of homework and try to figure out what to expect here. We're always trying to stay one step ahead because it's easier to stay one step ahead than try to play catch up. So it is a kind of a quirky little thing we got to go through, but I mean, we do it quite frequently, so.

[00:25:32] Wilaini: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:33] Zohair: Cool. Cool. The next question I had was about bystander intervention.

How can we as students prepare ourselves to deescalate a situation if we can, and when it's not. How do we know when it's appropriate, you know, to let this defer to a police officer?

[00:25:50] Dudley: I would never ask anybody to do something that they're not comfortable doing. That would be the number one thing, right?

Certainly. If you're not comfortable trying to handle it yourself, by all means call us. That's what we do, right.

That's what we get paid for. We're the ones that come out and try to diffuse those situations. So number one, don't do anything that you're not comfortable doing. Number two, call us if you can and it's safe to do so.

And then, you know, it really comes down to the situation, how comfortable you feel like if you know the person, if you know any of the parties, if you're able to diffuse it, by all means try to do so. There's so many different ways to try to diffuse a situation.

And again, a lot of variables at play there of how well do you know the people that are involved?

What's the point of contention that's causing all the outrage or the grief there?

So probably the biggest thing is don't do anything you're not comfortable doing.

[00:26:59] Darryn: Yeah, safety is the number one thing we're talking about. Two, step away, gather information for us. You know, everybody has a cell phone. Take pictures, you know, record it. That helps us on the back end when we go to do our reports and stuff like that. So if you can step away and get information for us, that's awesome. That's what we need.

[00:27:17] Kelly: But also, don't assume someone else has called us.

[00:27:20] Darryn: Correct.

[00:27:22] Kelly: I think sometimes people default to recording it versus calling the police.

[00:27:27] Dudley: And sometimes the best thing you can do is just be a really good witness.

[00:27:32] Darryn: Absolutely.

[00:27:32] Zohair: Yeah. When it comes to those de escalation tactics or techniques, how can a student learn and prepare if they don't already feel like they are prepared to do that? Especially freshmen coming into college, they're probably going to see a lot of things that they haven't seen before.

And how can they make sure that they have a little bit of a better understanding about de escalation in the first place? Are there trainings or resources or even self defense, things like that?

[00:27:59] Kelly: The university actually offers a bystander intervention training. I think it's. I can't remember if it's through student wellness, we link to it in some of our safety emails.

So the university does have some resources. It's not through public safety.

[00:28:15] Wilaini: Awesome.

[00:28:17] Zohair: Cool.

[00:28:18] Wilaini: Well, I guess our last question would be if you could tell one thing to students, maybe incoming or just students in general, what would you want them to know? Especially with the fall semester kind of rolling around?

[00:28:33] Zohair: And by extension, let me add real quick that how can students also be in a position to learn about public safety? Not everybody gets a chance to sit with you guys and have the opportunity to talk. Not everybody knows to look at the resources that are being posted by communication. So as a kind of back end of piggyback off of that question, how can they put themselves in situations where they are interacting with the police department?

[00:28:58] Dudley: So I think probably the best answer for both of those questions is we are here for a resource. We're here as a resource.

[00:29:07] Zohair: Right.

[00:29:08] Dudley: Anytime anybody has any questions and you see an officer out on the road, just stop and ask a question. That's what we're here for.

[00:29:14] Darryn: Absolutely.

[00:29:16] Dudley: When we look at other police agencies, take your local police agency. They probably have a school resource officer where the students start to get comfortable with that officer. That's who they always go to at the school.

[00:29:26] Darryn: Right.

[00:29:27] Dudley: If you think about it, every one of us in our department is a school resource officer. So we want to have that same type of a relationship where a student that has a question or is uneasy about something can stop any of us and say, hey, can you help me out here? That's the kind of relationship that we are trying to get with our students. We want to be open, we want to be a resource to everybody.

We have a lot of really good community engagement events that we have throughout the year.

[00:29:55] Darryn: I think we have, we got 707 basketball.

We invite all the students to come out and play in that. That's February. That's our way of trying to bridge that gap. As we talk about talking to the kids while they're playing basketball, we coach them.

It's a big time interaction piece.

We also have other engagements where we're walking out, just talking to the students. You know, we set up over at TUC where we're engaging with the students and stuff of that nature. So we are definitely out there trying to bridge that gap. I keep referring back to that because that's, that's special to us. That's definitely special to us. And, and also, yeah, we're out and about. If you guys see us, please talk to us. You know, I don't want us to be. Are you guys to be standoffish? Like, oh, I don't know what he's thinking. We have some great police officers who work for us, great police officers who want that interaction, you know, so please don't hesitate, ask Us questions. Ask us whatever you need. Because that's the beauty. The beauty in this job. You know, I came from another agency where all I did was went from call to call to call to call. Here we got the opportunity to be community oriented police officers.

So we definitely have time to, you know, get to know you.

[00:31:06] Zohair: That's awesome.

[00:31:07] Kelly: I'm also going to throw a couple specific dates out.

[00:31:10] Zohair: Perfect. That's great.

[00:31:11] Kelly: September 9th, we are doing a ice cream truck to help invite everyone to meet your public safety team and we'll give you ice cream.

And then on October 3rd. Yep, October 3rd, we will be doing. This will be our second year doing the Bearcats and badges E Bowl where we invite students to come in, compete in a video game tournament against our officers.

[00:31:37] Zohair: That's awesome.

[00:31:38] Kelly: And you win amazing prizes. And this year we're gonna time it with a UC football game so we can have a watch party.

So anyone you know who's into video games, please look out for that. We'll be announcing that and then I'm just gonna plug our social media. We post a lot of information on our social media. We're on Facebook and Instagram. We just launched our TikTok channel. Finally.

[00:32:01] Zohair: Perfect.

[00:32:03] Kelly: So please keep an eye on that too. We post a lot of information there.

[00:32:06] Darryn: This is me being silly. Don't forget about demo day.

[00:32:08] Kelly: What's the date for Demo Day? 

[00:32:10] Darryn: Demo Day is October 17th. Okay. And what we do, we have a lot of other agencies come out and join us. You guys are walking around, you get to interact with not only us, but other agencies. Yeah. So that's huge. That's kind of like my. My little thing right there. So we grill out, we have food for everybody. It's just. It's an awesome day. As a definitely awesome day.

[00:32:33] Wilaini: As a criminal justice student, we love demo days.

[00:32:36] Darryn: That's what I'm talking about.

[00:32:38] Zohair: There we go.

[00:32:39] Dudley: I will say one more thing. Especially for incoming freshmen that are kind of getting out for the first time. Right. We look at a lot of freshmen and one of the challenges that we have is we do education throughout the year, but every year we get a new group of students that we have to kind of

[00:32:56] Zohair: Reacclimate.

[00:32:56] Dudley: Exactly, right. And a lot of times students coming here as a freshman particularly, it's their first time away from home, it's their first time out on their own. And they don't really have the life experience of a seasoned college student.

So trying to get people to be more mindful of their stuff, being aware of their surroundings, making sure that they lock their doors, making sure that the stuff in their car is really not visible.

And then, you know, at high school, when you're in high school, it's not uncommon to have your laptop and you get up and you walk down the hallway, you go to the bathroom, get a drink, something like that. You come back and your laptop's there, right.

Theft is a crime of opportunity. It's our number one crime that we have on campus. And just getting people to be more mindful of their stuff and not leaving their stuff unattended, that is huge.

So that public safety aspect of being on campus, it's not just the police job. It's everybody's job. So if everybody does their part, then it makes everybody else's jobs a lot easier. The other issue that we have is bike theft and scooter theft.

If you have a bike or a scooter, please lock it up. Please don't use a cable lock. They're very easily defeated with wire cutters.

If you don't have a U lock, come and see us. We'll give you one.

[00:34:22] Wilaini: Do you guys also hand out steering wheel locks or are those ordered?

[00:34:25] Darryn: Okay, we do. As she said, it's for free. You guys come up to the Edwards Three, and you guys walk in, I think they have to fill out some stuff. And then for the serial number goes

[00:34:35] Kelly: For the U locks for the bikes and scooters we have a registration form on our website.

You could fill it out in our lobby if you didn't fill it out beforehand. For the steering wheel locks it's until we run out. But you don't need to do anything. Just come to our lobby and ask for one.

[00:34:51] Wilaini: Awesome. Very cool. Awesome. Very cool.

[00:34:53] Zohair: Yeah, I think that's all we got.

[00:34:55] Darryn: That's all you got. I thought you guys might have more than that.

I thought we'd go another half an hour.

[00:35:01] Wilaini: Right. Right.

[00:35:01] Darryn: You don't want to go another 30 minutes or anything?

[00:35:04] Zohair: I bet we probably could.

[00:35:05] Darryn: It was great. I mean, it was a pleasure having you guys on. Yeah, it kind of turning the tables a little bit. Obviously having our assistant chief here to answer all the great questions. Like I said, he is a pro. He's been here for a while, so he's definitely a pro. And you know, our PIO Officer Kelly Cantwell here to help out, so, you know, I'm not allowed to talk loud. She wrote me a note, but I am about to talk loud. This is season two. We're excited. Thank you guys for coming on board. We also got to say thanks to

[00:35:36] Kelly: 1819 Innovation Hub, the esports lounge. We are grateful to you for letting us use your space. Yeah.

[00:35:42] Wilaini: Thank you. Thank you.

[00:35:44] Darryn: Season two

[00:35:45] Zohair: Awesome. Thank you so, so much.

[00:35:46] Wilaini: Thank you for having us.

[00:35:48] Zohair: This has been great. This has been great.

[00:35:48] Wilaini: It's been awesome.

[00:35:49] Dudley: Thank you.

[00:35:49] Wilaini: Yeah.

---

[00:00:00] Darryn: So we're back with another episode of Standing on that Bridge of Bridging the Gap. You thought I forgot the title, didn't you? 

[00:00:08] Kelly: Little bit.

[00:00:09] Darryn: No, I did not because I always keep this thing moving. I am one of your hosts, Officer Darryn Chenault, and I'm here with my co-host

[00:00:16] Kelly Cantwell: Kelly Cantwell.

[00:00:17] Darryn: Kelly Cantwell, P-I-O.

[00:00:21] Kelly: That's correct.

[00:00:21] Darryn: Can you tell me what PIO stands for?

[00:00:23] Kelly: It stands for Public Information Officer.

[00:00:28] Darryn: I like that.

[00:00:28] Kelly: Not the same thing as police officer, to be abundantly clear.

[00:00:32] Darryn: That's still awesome. So, hey, today we're joined by some.

I always call them superstars. You guys are superstars. You keep our UC community safe. So I'm here with Rob Schrand and Mike Walker. How you guys doing today? 

[00:00:47] Rob: We're doing well. 

[00:00:48] Darryn: Everybody hanging in there?

[00:00:49] Mike: Yeah, yeah, it's a good day.

[00:00:51] Darryn: So tell me this. Kelly always jumps on me real quick because I always like to dive in and have a big old splash and go straight to the question. But I got to ask you to introduce yourself. So I'm going to start with the boss here, Rob Schrand. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? Where you from, how long you've been doing this, all that good stuff in life?

[00:01:10] Rob: Certainly. Rob Schrand. I work for the University of Cincinnati Public Safety Division in fire prevention.

I've been with the university 15 years now.

I grew up on the west side of Cincinnati and.

[00:01:25] Darryn: Oh, west side. Here we go.

West High.

I hope it wasn't west. Was it West High?

[00:01:31] Rob: It was a La Salle.

[00:01:32] Darryn: Okay, I'll give you that, lancer. Sorry about that.

[00:01:38] Mike: All right, so I'm Mike Walker. I also grew up on the west side.

[00:01:42] Darryn: Oh, my God.

[00:01:43] Mike: But I went to Roger Bacon. I'm a Roger Bacon kid.

I've been here at the university for three and a half years.

Retired from the City of Cincinnati Fire Division, and now I work here as a state of Ohio fire inspector for the university.

[00:02:01] Darryn: I love it. Two GCL guys on the show today. March Spartans down the field. See, I know that. I know that. I know that song.

[00:02:09] Kelly: You know, you're in Cincinnati when everyone's talking about their high school.

[00:02:13] Darryn: You're right. That's how we.

[00:02:14] Kelly: Classic Cincinnati thing.

[00:02:17] Mike: You know, the song that you know is not the original.

[00:02:18] Darryn: Oh, it's not?

[00:02:19] Mike: No, it is not.

[00:02:20] Darryn: It just, just killed me.

[00:02:21] Mike: They changed it from men of victory to something else to whatever it is today. It used to be because we were all boys school.

[00:02:28] Darryn: See, I guess I just learned something new.

[00:02:31] Mike: Yeah, it was, it was changed.

[00:02:31] Kelly: You can check that off your list.

[00:02:35] Darryn: I will check it off my list.

[00:02:36] Mike: My sophomore year was the first co ed year.

[00:02:39] Darryn: Really?

[00:02:40] Mike: OLA and Roger Bacon combined.

[00:02:43] Darryn: Yeah, I just learned something new. Thanks. Yeah, got Roger Bacon LaSalle here today representing University of Cincinnati.

[00:02:50] Mike: I can't tell you anything, anything good about La Salle.

[00:02:54] Kelly: Well, let's see if we can learn some other new things.

[00:02:57] Darryn: Yeah, let's dive into it. Tell me real quick, Rob, for you. What's the responsibilities?

What responsibilities does fire inspectors have here on the campus of University of Cincinnati? Sorry about that.

That was a lot.

[00:03:13] Rob: That was a lot.

[00:03:14] Darryn: Yeah, it was a lot.

[00:03:16] Rob: Well, you know keeping the University of Cincinnati safe is a lot too.

The tasks that Fire Prevention has within Public Safety is to conduct fire and life safety inspections on all the UC owned and operated property, which is growing immensely every year.

So we try to do at least one annual inspection on every building and then based off of findings, we'll do return visits to ensure that we have compliance and safety in those buildings.

For dormitories, we're doing multiple inspections a year making sure that our residential halls are safe.

We coordinate with other divisions within Public safety and the University of Cincinnati doing plan review and giving input on the installation of fire safety systems here on campus to ensure that they meet, meet the needs of the building, our occupants and fit into the makeup of how we monitor and operate our systems.

We also coordinate with facilities, departments and other divisions when systems are impaired.

That can be from a pre-planned impairment to a outage of our sprinklers or fire systems.

We coordinate with vendors when they come to work on our systems to ensure that the occupants of those buildings are still safe when they're being worked on and that they're not inconvenienced with false alarms or construction related.

[00:05:02] Darryn: I'm jump in there real quick. You talked about doing inspections on all these buildings with the University of Cincinnati. I mean, that's a lot of buildings. Would I be wrong in that?

[00:05:11] Rob: No

[00:05:13] Darryn: So what's the time frame? Is it like a time frame that you have to have a building inspected by the time it rolls around to the next time? Like, does that make sense to you?

[00:05:23] Mike: Yeah, we, we, we try to do our residential housing four times a year. And a couple times they're occupied.

[00:05:34] Darryn: Gotcha.

[00:05:34] Mike: So you have to maintain the safety features. Exit signs, lighting, lighting and stairwells, storage.

You also have other entities that are in the building, like housekeeping, that are over storing stuff. You got facilities.

[00:05:54] Darryn: Gotcha.

[00:05:55] Mike: Over storing stuff.

And we're short of storage here on campus, hence why we have Fishwick.

But no one likes to use Fishwick because of the distance that it is, so. But we can't have is you making the kids lives unsafe by not protecting their area. And so we do those four times a year. We're in the regular buildings twice a year and more if we find violations. If we find violations, we're there repeatedly every 30 days until we get it fixed.

Using your resources and your facilities or whoever is responsible for fixing it. So we try to keep everybody safe.

It's important to note that everybody, if they see something, say something, because we can't be everywhere at all times. There's only four of us and Rob's normally busy with meetings all day. So, you know, we try to get everywhere.

[00:07:01] Darryn: So we have four inspectors, fire inspectors for the whole University of Cincinnati. And that includes Clermont, Blue Ash and the rest of our off campus areas?

[00:07:12] Rob: That is correct, yes.

[00:07:13] Darryn: Wow.

[00:07:14] Mike: How many properties would you say, Rob?

[00:07:16] Rob: Quite a few

[00:07:19] Mike: I think we were.

[00:07:20] Rob: The list grows daily.

[00:07:21] Mike: I think Jeremy told me we were around 140-145 now.

[00:07:25] Darryn: And all that has to get done in a timely manner.

[00:07:27] Mike: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And it has to be reported, recorded and reported. Rob's on us constantly about keeping records.

[00:07:36] Darryn: Right.

[00:07:37] Mike: Proper records. You know, if something goes wrong, that's how it will be pulled back is, you know, what was the documentation?

[00:07:46] Darryn: I got you. Good deal.

[00:07:47] Kelly: All right. So this is probably a really basic question for you all, but I feel like a lot of people don't really understand the difference between a fire alarm and a fire drill. And I know that's part of, you know, your duty. So can you talk about what that means?

[00:08:02] Mike: Well, two separate things. Right. We go with the fire alarm first. Right. Fire alarms, our system. We have a very extravagant cyst fire alarm system here, and it's monitored by our911 center up at Edwards. Right. So if a fire alarm is pulled, a pull station or a smoke detector is activated, someone calls, we respond to the fire alarm to protect property, mitigate any resources that need to be handled. We have Cincinnati Fire Department that are responding, and what we don't want is someone tearing up our property for a false alarm.

So firemen tend to tear doors up if they don't have keys. Right.

They have all sorts of tools that they want to use that they didn't get to use. And they see this nice shiny door and they want to pop that door. Well that door could cost us $20,000.

[00:09:07] Darryn: Sounds like you're talking from experience.

[00:09:08] Mike: Yes, yes.

[00:09:09] Darryn: Okay. Yes.

[00:09:11] Mike: So we try to get there, to open the doors, to get everybody in and get everybody out, and then get the building reoccupied for continuity of business.

The quicker that we can do that and find out if, you know, what was the cause. It's normally human error. The system very rarely fails. Right.

We do have.

Sometimes there's gremlins in the system, but for the most part, the system very rarely fails. It's mostly human error.

[00:09:45] Darryn: Tell me this, Rob, are you guys on 24 hours out the day or is this something that, is it just like a 9 to 5? You guys come in, inspect, and then you go home.

[00:09:56] Rob: So Public Safety is staffed 24, 365.

However, the Fire Prevention Division is a Monday through Friday group.

We share the responsibilities of responding to fire alarm activations with the alarm tech division, which is a group of individuals that are tasked with just servicing our fire alarm systems and maintaining them, testing them.

We also share the responsibilities with emergency management, with our facilities department, and then ultimately our uniform division within Public Safety. So our police officers will also respond to fire alarms and interact.

[00:10:42] Darryn: I was just curious.

[00:10:43] Darryn: Go ahead, I'm sorry. I was just curious, like if it was a fire or something was going on after hours. Say, you know, Officer Chenault's working 7pm and I see something that doesn't look right. You know, am I calling dispatch to call one of you guys to come in to see what's going on with this or how does that work?

[00:11:02] Rob: So if there's a identified issue or concern. We have on call individuals with our, within our emergency management division that take up an on call status and can coordinate with specialty groups within public safety, whether it be fire prevention or so forth, to react to those types of situations.

The other part was fire drills.

[00:11:32] Kelly: Yes.

[00:11:34] Rob: Fire drills are a pre scheduled and predetermined activity.

We are required, due to our occupancy and the type of work that we do here at the university o conduct emergency preparedness drills, which include activating the fire alarm system and exercising our evacuation procedures.

And then based off of what type of occupancy, whether it's a residential hall, assembly occupancy within a building or a business, dictates the frequency that we do our drills.

I know we're coming up on the start of the academic season.

You know, one of the things that we're required to do is drill within so many days of the start of school.

We're also required to do a drill in the nighttime hours.

[00:12:36] Darryn: Okay.

[00:12:37] Rob: So to practice what it would be like to evacuate a structure during low light conditions.

And what we're looking for is, you know, operation of the fire alarm system, how people evacuate, you know. You know, we're always preaching don't use the elevators.

You know, we're trying to get a feel of individuals that would need additional resources.

You know, we're always exercising our policies to seek refuge in designated areas and then testing our intercommunication Systems with our 911 systems.

[00:13:16] Darryn: So, Mike, tell me this. UC students who know what about fire safety? Especially the ones living on campus.

[00:13:23] Mike: I would say the first thing would be, is don't ignore the fire alarm. That's the first, that's the most important.

[00:13:30] Darryn: How often does that happen?

[00:13:31] Mike: It happens a lot. It happens when we are pulling fire alarms for scheduled fire drills. You know, I've been standing outside of buildings and looked up in the window and seen kids looking out at me, right? So they get, they get to the point where they don't understand what a fire drill is and what an actual alarm is. Because you're going to get the same alarms, you're going to get the same siren, the same messaging, you're going to get the same bells, right? It's going to sound the same in a drill as it will it would be in a fire alarm. But the conditioning of it is get out, don't ignore it. Right.

[00:14:19] Mike: Also, they should know two ways out. When you move into your dorm, you move into your housing, you should always recognize two exits.

You want to know where the stairwells are. And by doing that, you create a path of egress for yourself. Is my dorm door closer to this staircase or closer to this staircase? In all of our staircases, we keep identification, whether it be A through J.

You know, we identify our staircases, we identify our hallways, Find out where that is, locate your exits.

The other thing is know where the fire extinguishers are. Right.

If you're cooking, don't leave your food. Right. Stop burning popcorn.

Macaroni needs water.

[00:15:13] Darryn: Sounds like we did that in office. He said it needs water.

[00:15:19] Mike: You know, I can't tell you how many times they take the micro, the craft macaroni cup, throw it in there, close the door, fire it up, walk away. Next thing you know, four minutes later, you see me. And you're like I was just making macaroni.

Yeah, you really weren't. But yes, macaroni needs water. Those things are important to know.

Other than that, there's so many things that, that go along with being a young adult and taking responsibility for yourself. But not recognizing the possibilities of, of what could, what could be danger is, is it is an acceptance that they have to take on. Of responsibility.

[00:16:06] Darryn: I got you.

[00:16:07] Mike: You know, we. We expect a lot when they come here, and we don't typically have a lot of bad behavior.

We have just lost Crosley Tower, where, you know, we had strange things going on. Fire extinguishers being discharged. And the fire extinguisher is not a fog machine.

You know, important things to know.

[00:16:34] Darryn: You see students. UC students enjoying. Yes. Having a good time.

[00:16:38] Mike: The exit sign should not be moved from the hallway to your room, though. That is for the engineering students taking the exit signs when they graduate. You know, things like that. Those things are, are part of the fire safety program here, and they, they should recognize that.

[00:16:57] Kelly: What about sprinkler heads?

[00:17:00] Mike: We. We've actually had that.

Rob, what building was it that had the sprinkler head? They had the boombox on the sprinkler head.

[00:17:07] Darryn: The boom box on the sprinkler head?

[00:17:12] Rob: It happened. Clothes have been hung at our hotels and on our dormitories off the sprinkler heads.

Apparently, it's very enticing to hook that hanger over the top of a sprinkler head.

[00:17:27] Darryn: Okay.

[00:17:28] Rob: Yes.

I know a young lady years ago who ruined her evening gown.

[00:17:38] Darryn: Okay.

[00:17:38] Rob: Did not make her event due to breaking one of the sprinkler heads.

[00:17:43] Darryn: Wow.

[00:17:44] Kelly: So if you hang something on a sprinkler head, what happens?

[00:17:48] Mike: 40 gallons per minute.

[00:17:50] Kelly: Oh, that sounds like all your stuff is getting ruined.

[00:17:53] Mike: Yeah, and everybody below you.

[00:17:55] Kelly: Oh, so you're gonna make a lot of friends that way.

[00:17:58] Mike: Water. Water finds its lowest point.

[00:18:00] Kelly: So if you're on the top floor of Morgan's Hall and you want to make a lot of friends, blow the sprinkler head and see how many rooms you can flood?

[00:18:09] Rob: I would not recommend that.

[00:18:11] Darryn: That's not a good thing.

I do want to back up because you, you said something interesting. When you guys have a fire alarm or drill. I'm sorry. And the kids are supposed to evacuate, and you said you saw kids up in the building. Are there any repercussions because they stay in the building?

[00:18:29] Rob: You know, it's a dangerous behavior, and we don't want to preach that that is a safe behavior. So ultimately, we put a lot of effort into designing the most sophisticated fire alarm systems with early notification as possible, and they're there for the purpose of letting the occupants know that there's a threat within the building.

[00:18:57] Darryn: Okay.

[00:18:59] Rob: You know, we've, we've greatly decreased just in my 15 years, the number of alarm drops that were nuisance alarms here on campus, and that is because of the equipment that we've installed in our dormitories. You know, Calhoun, Siddall, Morgan Scioto, just in my time, have been upgraded and overhauled.

Very nice, nicer conditions.

They did a fantastic job of remodeling those buildings, and we're seeing the fruits of that labor with decreased number of false activations on our fire alarm systems.

[00:19:40] Mike: But we still, we still respond to over 300 alarms a year.

[00:19:46] Darryn: Yeah, because I see it when it really happens, there's a fire, heaven forbid, and the kids who didn't take it serious stay up in their rooms. Now you putting other people's lives at stake because firefighters or police officers are the one that have to run up there. I got you. Okay.

[00:20:04] Rob: It takes away. We have a finite number of individuals that can respond to emergencies on campus utilizing the City of Cincinnati's resources or our county partners, whether it be in Blue Ash or City of Reading or, you know, Central Joint in Clermont.

And yeah, that behavior takes away from the activities that need to take place in eliminating the threat. And you're just putting yourself in danger.

To answer your question, we do have resources through the code of conduct office, but I, I'd much rather get the word out through avenues like this and public education that, you know, evacuation is the appropriate behavior.

[00:20:55] Kelly: So generally, you're not really trying to get people in trouble. You're just trying to keep them safe.

[00:21:00] Mike: Well, we're trying to teach them a pattern of behavior. Right. How to respond to this emergency.

[00:21:07] Kelly: Because we do have a fire sometimes. You know, I think in the time I've worked here, we've had at least two fires in residence halls, and they're not during the nine to five hours, they're late at night at 10pm or something like that.

[00:21:21] Darryn: Is that because they're making macaroni cheese without water?

[00:21:23] Mike: Yes, a lot.

[00:21:25] Darryn: I mean, we can sit here and joke about it, but it's really serious about the whole situation and making sure that we understand what's going on.

[00:21:36] Mike: One of those fires was a Christmas tree.

It was a real Christmas tree that I think they took a break, went home, came back, they left the Christmas tree, and there was no water in the pan.

So they turned the lights back on and the Christmas tree caught fire.

So the same behaviors that we're trying to teach them are really the same muscle memory activities that firefighters and police officers do while they're training.

We train for that moment and we're trying to get you to train for that moment.

Because what you're really doing is that firefighter or police officer, they're not going to hesitate to put their life on the line to come and get you. But why is that necessary? Right. If you're evacuating, then they only have to extinguish the fire or surround the perimeter to make sure that no one gets hurt.

But if you don't come out, that changes the temperature of how they respond to the situation.

So now they have to respond, you know, get there, tank up, get in there, grab you and then get you back down safely. Well, you know, a lot of things can go wrong in that.

So why put their lives in jeopardy just because you didn't want to get out of bed?

So yeah, there's a serious, there's a serious tint to it. But we're also trying to teach you something.

[00:23:09] Darryn: I get it. I totally get it.

[00:23:11] Kelly: Wow. On the flip side, what about employees? What do you wish employees knew more about fire safety when they're coming to work on campus?

[00:23:21] Rob: So the first thing that we preach to our employees is know the atmosphere you're working in. Know the building you're working in.

Public Safety publicizes emergency evacuation procedures on our public safety website.

So if you are individual that works in the new Old Chem building or the Braunstein structure, you can go onto our public safety website and pull up those buildings and find the unique evacuation procedures for those buildings.

We talk about knowing the safety engineering pieces that have been added to your building.

So specifically fire extinguishers, you know, know where the fire extinguishers are.

If you need an education piece on how to use a fire extinguisher, we have on our public safety website our fire extinguisher training class. So individuals can go to our public safety website and take our fire extinguisher training and get a refresher on the use of fire extinguishers here.

[00:24:39] Darryn: Are you teaching that or who's teaching that class?

[00:24:46] Rob: I'm not teaching that.

[00:24:47] Darryn: You're not teaching that class?

[00:24:49] Rob: It was a well put together together a presentation on the use of fire extinguishers.

You know, no other types of pre engineered fire safety equipment on campus. You know, know how to work the hood systems in your laboratories, know how to use the kitchen systems if you're working at any one of our commercial kitchen applications.

[00:25:13] Darryn: Gotcha.

[00:25:14] Rob: You know, know where pull stations are and how to activate pull stations. You know, be present of where the initiating devices are in terms of smoke detectors, heat detectors, so that you do not partake in activities that would add false alarms to that.

You know, when reacting to an emergency on campus, you know, we tell you to get out, get others out, make early notification, and confine the fire. And if it's in a incipient stage, you know, and you feel comfortable, use the provided fire extinguishers.

[00:25:57] Darryn: Good deal. Good deal. Well, I know we run out of time here.

[00:26:01] Kelly: We sure are.

[00:26:02] Darryn: I know. I'm surprised you didn't cut me off while I was talking. Usually she cuts me off. She. She does one of these things or just puts her hand, like, mute, Darryn. But I just wanted to say thanks for coming on.

Definitely appreciate what you guys do for the UC community as well as our faculty and staff.

I just appreciate it. I know the students appreciate everything that you guys do as well. So if you want to go ahead and wrap this up. Before you wrap it up, though, got to say thank you to 1819 Innovation Hub for allowing us to be here to do this podcast. So we thank you guys for doing this.

I'm always wrapping things up, so now Kelly feels like, you know, she's got to be the one, so you can go ahead and wrap it up.

[00:26:45] Kelly: Well, this was awesome. We really appreciate your time and given us a little dive into fire safety on campus. It's such an important topic.

And thank you to everyone for listening to episode 10. I think we're on episode 10.

[00:26:59] Darryn: I have no idea. I just. I keep dropping.

[00:27:01] Kelly: You're along for the ride.

[00:27:03] Darryn: Right. Rob Schrand and Mike Walker.

Keep doing what you're doing.

[00:27:08] Mike: All right. Appreciate you guys.

[00:27:10] Darryn: Have a good one.

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[00:00:00] Darryn: We're back for another episode of Bridging the Gap Live. I love saying live. For whatever reason, I know we're recording this whole thing. 

[00:00:10] Kelly: Yeah. This is not live at all. 

[00:00:11] Darryn: I know, but I like saying it. Sounds good, but we're back Bridging the Gap. I'm your guy, Darryn Chenault. I'm here with my co host, Kelly Cantwell. Kelly Cantwell. We're here with two wonderful people from UCPD, Detective Matt Kackley and Detective Maurice Milton. How are you guys doing today?  

Det. Milton: Doing well.  

Det. Kackley: Doing good.  

Darryn: Doing good. Just hanging out, huh? 

[00:00:34] Det. Milton: Yeah. 

[00:00:34] Darryn: I see you guys got your UC gear on, ready to roll. 

[00:00:37] Det. Milton: We always represent. 

[00:00:38] Darryn: All right, that's what I'm talking about. But before we get started, though, I always got to ask my co host, how you doing? 

[00:00:45] Kelly: I'm great, Darryn. How are you? 

[00:00:46] Darryn: I'm doing well. Everybody good around you? 

[00:00:48] Kelly: Of course. 

[00:00:49] Darryn: I like it. You always bring out the sunshine. Oh, yeah. See, I just shout outs right there. She brought out the sunshine today and it's a cloudy day. All that good stuff, guys. We always just dive into it. We're going to talk about a little bit of scams and how we can help our wonderful people around here at the University of Cincinnati. Here we go. 

[00:01:08] Kelly: We could let them introduce themselves. 

[00:01:10] Darryn: See, this is how I get in trouble. Detective Kackley, if you can give us a little background on where you've been, who you are, all that good stuff. 

[00:01:18] Det. Kackley: Sure. I'm Detective Matt Kackley. Grew up in Columbus, moved down to Cincinnati, went to University of Cincinnati. I've been with the university for 23 years. 

[00:01:28] Darryn: 23 years. 

[00:01:30] Det. Kackley: Yep. 

[00:01:31] Darryn: You are the man. That's a long time. 

[00:01:33] Det. Kackley: It is a long time. 

[00:01:35] Darryn: You are the man. How about my guy over here? 

[00:01:38] Det. Milton: My name is Maurice Milton. I was not born in Cincinnati, but I've been living here since I was 4 years old. So I always call Cincinnati home. I actually went to a Christian college, but I felt my call for law enforcement, and I came here to UC. I've been here for eight years now. 

[00:01:56] Darryn: So I gotta ask, where were you born at? 

[00:01:58] Det. Milton: I was born in Norfolk, Virginia. Dad was in the Navy. Lived there for a year and then moved to Goose Creek, South Carolina, for a few years. And then when my dad became a bailiff at Hamlin county courts, we moved to Cincinnati. So that's pretty much all I remember is Cincinnati. 

[00:02:13] Darryn: Never knew that about you. Never knew that about you. 

[00:02:16] Det. Milton: Yeah. 

[00:02:17] Darryn: Wow. Wow. Can I dive in now? 

[00:02:20] Kelly: Yes. 

[00:02:20] Darryn: Oh, I like diving. 

[00:02:21] Kelly: Go right ahead. 

[00:02:21] Darryn: I like diving. We're gonna talk about scams and how we can help the wonderful people here at the University of Cincinnati. I guess my biggest thing is what are some of the most common online scams that you guys investigate here at the University of Cincinnati? I'll start with Detective Kackley. 

[00:02:40] Det. Kackley: I'd say some of our biggest scams are employment scams. That's probably one of our biggest ones. Maybe employment scams. Their computer's broken. You've been. You've been hacked, and you have a virus. Another one. We get a lot scam. Social media scams is another big one that we get. 

[00:03:05] Darryn: Really? 

[00:03:06] Det. Kackley: Yeah. 

[00:03:06] Darryn: I just. Was just what? Two weeks ago, they had a scam or something going on the computer about grades or something. I guess it was the last week of school and somebody were entering grades. I thought I heard one of the students talk about that. I could be wrong, so.  

[00:03:22] Det. Kackley: It didn’t bounce back to us. 

[00:03:23] Det. Milton: Yeah. 

[00:03:25] Darryn: That's all that counts. 

[00:03:26] Kelly: We're all looking at you like, what? 

[00:03:28] Darryn: Oh, I hear things. I hear things, Kelly. I'm out there. I hear things.

[00:03:32] Det. Milton: It helps he has a kid here, too. 

[00:03:33] Darryn: It definitely helps. It definitely helps. 

[00:03:35] Det. Kackley: I think also, I forgot. The other one is probably housing scams. You know, there's another big one that comes up. You know, places for rent, need a roommate, that kind of stuff. 

[00:03:46] Darryn: So what about some of our students that are currently, I guess, from a different...help me out here? 

[00:03:52] Kelly: They're international students. 

[00:03:53] Darryn: International students here. And they come over here, and I hear that they get threats of somebody back home is being held hostage or something, and they have to go get gift cards. Have you guys heard about that? And can you talk about that a little bit? 

[00:04:06] Det. Milton: Yeah, we've had a few of those where they get a call from somebody saying they're from the UCISor from ICE or something like that, and they get a call saying that your family members are gonna be held hostage. They're gonna get killed if you don't pay us. So then they tell them, go get gift cards from different places and send those gift cards to us, and they're getting scammed out of a bunch of money. And it's. It's something that they. They're very close with their families, so, I mean, they take that stuff seriously. They sometimes just don't think, well, maybe I should call the police first and make sure that this is a real thing. And we feel kind of bad for them, especially them coming to visit here. And a lot of them, they're by themselves. So what else are they to do? It's like, we gotta take this serious. Cause I don't want anything to happen to my family. 

[00:04:52] Darryn: And I bet a lot of them don't even trust the police. 

[00:04:55] Det. Milton: Some of them don't. Just from some of the international students I've met over my years of being here. It takes a little bit for them to trust some of us. So when we built that rapport, that's a really big thing right there, having a rapport with the international students. And when that gets out there that we have built rapport with some of them, they start trusting us a little bit more. 

[00:05:13] Darryn: So. 

[00:05:15] Kelly: So we've also heard about scams where international students get told maybe there's like a warrant out for their arrest or they're in some sort of legal trouble. Can you talk about those? 

[00:05:25] Det. Kackley: Yeah. It's kind of weird that somehow they always get focused on international students. We're not sure how they get a hold of this group of people that are from. Not from here. But it's really, when it comes down to us and having a warrant, like, we don't call you and tell you you need to pay us to get rid of a warrant. Another country, I would highly doubt they'd say, you need to call us and, you know, to get rid of your warrant. So that's a big thing for us, is like, you know, recognizing what could or couldn't be a scam or somebody trying to take all your money from you. And I try to think of the best way to say it to them. You know, it's. You know, we don't do that. We don't ask for money to get rid of your warrant or else ICE or international, you know, we're going to deport you if you don't pay, you know, to get out of it. You know, if. If you have a problem, you just go over to the police department and talk to them, and they'll probably tell you that the same thing is that we don't know anything that you're talking about. 

[00:06:32] Darryn: Right. 

[00:06:33] Kelly: You know, I actually had an experience late recently where someone called me and said they were from, I think, the sheriff's office, and they knew who I was and they had my cell phone number. And he said, well, we. You didn't do some jury duty thing you had to do, so we have a warrant for you and we're going to come arrest you. And I was like, excuse me, you know, I know that I've done everything I need to do for jury duty or not Jury duty. But it still, it really threw me because I don't have a Cincinnati area code. Even so, he had my phone number. He knew I lived in Hamilton county, and, you know, I work here. So I'm skeptical enough to be like, this doesn't seem right. But I talked to one of our other detectives and he even called the line back and the guy's voicemail said, this is Captain whoever. And it was just wild. Like, I feel like they're getting so creative with the scams. 

[00:07:22] Darryn: Is that a lot of AI playing into this stuff nowadays or... 

[00:07:28] Det. Milton: I would not be surprised. One thing I've noticed, even at other jobs I've had these scammers, they do a lot of homework on what they need to do, and they're always coming up with bigger things and sadly, better things to, in order to catch people in these scams. So it's. It's only going to get more from there. And AI, that's not going to help us out at all. 

[00:07:46] Darryn: Right. Oh, I get you. I get you. What are some of the general tips that students should follow to protect themselves from scams and stuff like that? 

[00:07:53] Det. Milton: I would definitely say the big one is don't share any of your personal information. Never do that. If you have somebody that's asking for like your Social Security number for international students, it could be asking for like, their passport and their passport numbers and stuff like that. Don't give any of that to them. If you have anybody asking for that stuff, it's gonna, nine times out of ten be a scam. And even then with like Detective Kackley said about getting these emails for some of these job offers. Read the email sometimes. Actually, I've laughed a couple of times when reading that email, especially the email address that it came from. You could even tell from some of the way that some of those words are written, like it's misspelled. And it's like, well, that right there is already a big red flag because this is misspelled. Or even the dot something. It could be something that looks way out of line. It's like, well, that just seems weird. 

[00:08:44] Darryn: So it seems like you need to just take your time when you get these emails or text messages. Because I know for a fact I get something saying, I want $1,000. I'm like, calling them back, give me my thousand dollars. And the next thing you know, I'm telling them everything and all my information.  

[00:09:01] Det. Milton: Yeah. And then all in all, if you feel that it is a. A scam or you're not 100% sure. Send into abuse. Abuse would definitely look into it. I've done it before myself. I'll get things. And they're like, this looks like a phishing one. I'll send it to abuse. And they're like, yeah, it was a phishing. All right, you can go ahead and delete it now. 

[00:09:16] Kelly: So when you say abuse, you mean...?  

[00:09:20] Det. Milton: UCIT. Yeah, yeah, they're very helpful. They don't mind you sending things to them and they'll look into it. It normally takes them less than a day, and they will normally email you back saying, okay, we took care of it. It is efficient scam. You can go ahead and delete the email now. And then if it is something that's been happening, often they don't hesitate to send things out. Just warn other students, faculty and staff. 

[00:09:40] Det. Kackley: Yeah, that's like one tip I'd say is if you get a call from somebody saying that they're their sheriff or they're from Intermat, you know, some sort of law enforcement is. Just get their name, ask who they work for, and then look them up yourself online. Don't look up. Don't take the phone number that they tell you to call or look at the phone number that's on your phone, because that can all be spoofed now. So whatever shows up on your phone is not. Could not be correct. 

[00:10:05] Darryn: Right. 

[00:10:06] Det. Kackley: So if they say they're Detective Johnson from the Miami Police Department, well, say, okay, let me call you right back. And then look up the Miami Police Department and call their phone number and say, can I speak to Detective Johnson? And then they'll. They'll connect you. I do that all the time when I call people that I'm looking for in. Or a random people that I need to talk to. I tell them who I am. And if they seem skeptical about who I am, like, tell you what, this is my name, this is who I work for. You call the department and ask for me. They'll connect you right to me. And that way it's. You're not feeding them information about what number to call or anything else they can do. The same thing is just take down the name and who they work for and say, I'll call you back. And then do that themselves. 

[00:10:50] Darryn Is it. Is it a time of the year where, like, this is hitting its peak? Like, is it Christmas? 

Det. Milton: Fall 

Darryn: Is it fall time? 

[00:10:56] Det. Milton: Yeah. 

Det. Kackley: International students especially, because they're all going to. A lot of students are going to start arriving in late July, probably to start coming in. And that's when the international office starts getting. You look at airlines and you can look at TSA stuff and people getting visas. There's so much public information out there to know who's traveling into the United States and when they're coming that it's not hard to figure out that all these students are going to have to be. This is the first day of school this year, August twenty something. Probably. Probably, you know, so they're all going to. All the students are going to be here by early August. Especially if they're international. They have to come in, get used to it. They've probably never lived here before. So. Yeah, so fall. Fall is always big because they're looking for jobs to work and they're looking, you know, the students are going to be looking for jobs, so they get scammed out of job emails. You know, if it sounds good, it's probably too good to be true. 

[00:11:49] Darryn: Right, I get it. 

[00:11:50] Kelly: Can you dive a little more into tips to avoid those job scams? 

[00:11:55] Det. Kackley: Yeah. One, if you didn't actively go search out that job and know you put an application in, it's probably a scam. If you get an email from somebody, say, hey, I'm a professor here and I'm looking for somebody to do something for me. Well, they're not going to reach out to random students. You have to reach out to that professor yourself. You know, you're going to go look for a job. Jobs don't. In the US the jobs just don't find you. You know, you're not going to get a random email saying, I have a job for you. You know, so if you get a job offer and they're like, oh, yeah, by the way, I need you to go to the bank and send me money. I'll send you a check. And you use half of that check for your paycheck this week. But you, you go out and buy this other stuff and then mail this stuff to me. It's probably a scam. You know, employers don't do that here. They're not asking you to go buy stuff on your own and then send them, you know, keep half the money for yourself and then send half of it back to them. 

[00:12:51] Darryn: I got you. 

[00:12:52] Det. Kackley: So you just gotta be really skeptical. 

[00:12:54] Kelly: I've seen scams where, like, it looks like it comes from a UC staff or faculty member's email address. 

[00:13:00] Det. Kackley: Yeah, yeah. Everything nowadays, like, because you mentioned AI, there's so many tools online that you can spoof what things look like and how they appear. It's really Hard to tell, you know, so really, like Maurice said, was signing it to UFI, UC's infosec department, looking them up online and just sending it to them, say, hey, is this real or fake? And then they can tell you because they can see a lot more than, you know, we can. They can see where it came from, how far it came, if it actually came from a professor's email or not. So they're really good at that part.

[00:13:31] Det. Milton: Yeah. 

[00:13:31] Det. Kackley: So be skeptical, you know, not saying that good things can't happen to people, but be skeptical when it comes to jobs, especially when you're new to the area, you know. 

[00:13:43] Darryn: Wow. Hey, tell me this. I. You. We're talking about scams and social media. You throw social media in there and stuff like that, sharing photos, Is that. Is that a big thing as far as, you know, scams or just kind of holding that over somebody's head? 

[00:13:58] Kelly: What kind of photos, Darryn? 

[00:14:00] Det. Kackley: Not great photos. 

[00:14:01] Darryn: Yeah, not good. Yeah. 

[00:14:02] Det. Kackley: Yeah, I think. 

[00:14:04] Darryn: Thanks, Kelly. 

[00:14:05] Det. Kackley: We're all old enough in here that the world has changed so much with how people meet people and how people feel lonely and, you know, new neighborhoods, new cities, new, you know, wherever they're at, they look for love in all kinds of places. And I think social media dating apps can be great for some people. But I think just be careful what you send online to people. If you've never met this person face to face before. I personally would never send them anything. 

[00:14:37] Det. Milton: Right. 

[00:14:37] Det. Kackley: Because all they're going to do is once you send that, they're going to ask you for something back and then if you don't really do it, they're going to threaten to send it to your family. And then all they're going to do at the end of the day is if they get money out of you, they're going to use whatever you sent them to scam the next person. 

[00:14:53] Darryn: So if I send a person a picture of myself in my uniform and all that stuff, is it some stuff out there where they can make that picture, like nude or something like that?  

Det. Milton: Yeah.  

Darryn: Just taking your head off and putting it on something else. I don't know, I just hear crazy things like that. 

[00:15:09] Det. Milton: No, that is definitely something that they do. They have used people's photos before and they will use AI and they'll digitally change the what's in the photo so you can have your uniform on, but then they can maybe change it, just put your head in a nude body or something like that and they will use that and they'll try to scam you out of money with that photo. 

[00:15:30] Darryn: So that goes back to your point. Not just sending any kind of picture, right? Pretty much. Gotcha. 

[00:15:34] Det. Kackley: I mean with the Internet and how much is on Instagram and other pages, you can get pictures of people from almost anywhere. So my suggestion would be locked down your profiles, only accept people that you know. You know, if I know you, Darryn, and you know Kelly, well, okay, you might want to take that. You might want to ask who's Kelly? 

[00:15:56] Darryn: Right. 

[00:15:56] Det. Kackley: You know, before you accept it from somebody. So it's private. Private settings are great for that. 

[00:16:03] Darryn: I'm glad I'm so old I don't even get on that stuff. 

[00:16:05] Det. Milton: Another thing I like to do is I like to look and see how many friends they have. If I'm seeing a bunch of random people or if I see like maybe like 10 friends, that's also a big thing too that I'm looking at. Like this is probably a spam request. Like I probably shouldn't even be accepting this. Like one, I don't know you two, you have very little bit of friends. And then also like to try to hit photos too. Like some people have their privacy setting, but if it's just like one photo and it's an open public type profile, it's like, yeah, this is probably a scam. So just some of those little things you can look for. 

[00:16:37] Darryn: No doubt. I was even sitting up here thinking about our athletes. I mean they're high profile people here at the university and they probably need to be super careful on what they're doing and stuff like that. No, that's a good point. Good point. You also go ahead, I’m sorry. 

[00:16:51] Kelly: You also mentioned housing scams earlier. Can we dive a little into what, what those look like and what students can do to avoid those? 

[00:17:00] Det. Kackley: Yeah, I think housing scams are tough because everybody's always looking for housing. They're looking for cheap housing. And a lot of times, especially like international students I think fall victim to a lot. But I think just our national or our local students fall for it too, you know, because they need to spend as little money as possible. They just need a room. They don't care who the roommates are, they just need a room. And so they'll get you look on like Marketplace or something like that. There's posts and there's, there's posts for housing all over the place that they find and you know, if somebody's asking for you, saying oh, you have to pay me first before you can come look at it, that's going to be A scam? Yeah, nobody's, you know, housing's hot right now, but it's not that hot where you have to pay somebody to come look at it, you know, so, you know, go knock on the door where you want to live, you know, look up, look for the boards in the different offices and different buildings that we have. A lot of people post things up on paper, you know, one bedroom for rent. You know, if you're a DAP student, there's kids that go on co op all the time that are gone for the semester, but they have a year lease, you know, so they need somebody to fill in for the spring semester for them. Look for those, look at your classmates that know of a building or know the landlords stuff. And that's probably your best bet then to randomly search online. 

[00:18:21] Darryn: A good deal. Hey, before we close up, do you guys have anything to add that can probably help some of our faculty and students and staff around here at the university? As far as scams, I know you guys hit on a lot, but what was one thing that you guys would just, hey, don't do this. 

[00:18:39] Det. Milton: Just be cognizant of what you're doing and err on side of caution. 

Go for that gut feeling too. A lot of people do not trust their gut. That is one thing I think I've learned over the years. Even just being a police officer is going with that gut feeling. If you got a gut feeling about something, it's probably there for a reason because you feel something's just not right. And maybe I should not do this, or maybe I need to send this to our UCIT team. 

[00:19:06] Det. Kackley: I think my other thing is, listen to your friends and family. If they're all telling you, no, don't do this, don't do it, don't do it. You know, when it comes to things like housing and job offers and stuff like that, you know, some things you got to go out on your own and push, push yourself, you know, to do things. But what's going to cost you money? Look at it. And if it's too good to be true, listen to your family, listen to your friends. Take your time. Go ask a stranger that you see on the street, does this look right to you? And if they're like that does not look right. You know, it's probably fake. 

[00:19:40] Darryn: And they can always reach out to you guys if they have questions or anything like that. 

[00:19:44] Det. Milton: Yeah, we're always open to help somebody out if need be. I mean, we still have people that we've helped out in cases we say if you need anything, give us a call. They'll call us every once in a while if they have a question about something. We recommend that that's definitely how we're gonna build rapport with these students, too. And this is gonna help them trust us more. 

[00:20:01] Det. Kackley: The beauty of public safety. We're open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so come into the lobby at 3am and ask a question. They'd be more than happy to help you out. 

[00:20:10] Det. Milton: Yep. They would definitely send you the right person. 

[00:20:12] Darryn: I know I can sleep well at night knowing that these two guys are on the case. They on the case. 

[00:20:17] Det. Milton: What you talking about? We come to you for things. 

[00:20:19] Darryn: I doubt that. 

[00:20:21] Kelly: So if I had to sum it up, I feel like one of the biggest takeaways I got from y' all is be skeptical. 

[00:20:26] Det. Milton: Yes. 

[00:20:27] Kelly: Be skeptical of anything, especially if it comes to you and it feels too good to be true. 

[00:20:31] Det. Milton: Yeah. 

[00:20:33] Kelly: And if I could add one thing that I tell my mother all the time. Don't click on the link. 

[00:20:38] Det. Milton: Yeah, don't click on the link. 

[00:20:40] Det. Kackley: Yep. 

[00:20:41] Darryn: Dropping the mic right there. I want to say thanks to 1819 Innovation Hub for having us again. I don't know what episode this is, but. Kelly, what episode is it? I put her on the spot. Is it nine? 

Kelly: It’s nine.  

Darryn: Wow. I'm gonna go with 10 because we knocking these out.

[00:20:57] Kelly: I really hope I'm not wrong. 

[00:20:59] Darryn: We're having fun doing it, so thanks again. Appreciate you guys for tuning in. And, Kelly, last words? 

[00:21:07] Kelly: I don't have any. 

[00:21:08] Darryn: Bye. Bye. Enjoy.

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[00:00:00] Darryn: Hey, hey, good people, we're back. I'm your guy, Darryn Chenault, standing on the bridge of Bridging the Gap. We're back with another episode, and I'm here with my lovely co host, 

Kelly: Kelly Cantwell. 

Darryn: Kelly Cantwell. And we got a super duper star, as I always like to put it, Ed Dadosky. But before I jump into Ed, I always gotta ask a question to Kelly here. How you doing, Kelly?

[00:00:24] Kelly: I'm great, Darryn. How are you?

[00:00:25] Darryn I'm doing well. How's life with you?

[00:00:27] Kelly: Oh, it's great.

[00:00:29] Darryn: I can't wait. It's great. Can I get more than great?

[00:00:32] Kelly: What do you want to know?

[00:00:33] Darryn: No, I want to know if you, feeling great great. 

Kelly: Great great! 

Darryn: There it is. That's what I want.

[00:00:38] Kelly: As my toddler would say, great, great, great.

[00:00:40] Darryn: That's awesome. That's awesome. Ed, if you don't mind, first of all, Ed's a very, very good friend of mine outside of work, this guy is a great person. He does a lot in his community.

Actually, my brother, who was a Cincinnati firefighter, had the opportunity to serve with Ed in the city of Cincinnati. But, Ed, if you don't mind, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

[00:01:03] Ed: Yeah, certainly. And thanks again for having me this morning. It's good to be here with you. Yeah, and Eddie was a good man. Really enjoyed working with Eddie.

[00:01:11] Darryn: I appreciate that.

[00:01:11] Ed: He's a good man. But my name is Ed Dudoske. I've been with the university now for 10 years. I came to the university from the university from the city of Cincinnati, from the Cincinnati Fire Department, where I served there for 32 years before I transitioned. Almost right away at the university.

[00:01:31] Darryn: That's awesome. That's awesome. So as since you've been here, how's the transition gone? Smooth?

[00:01:37] Ed: It's been different. And I came in at a time in 2016 when things really weren't all that good up here for a number of different reasons. And that was one of the reasons that I was brought here to help at that time, university administration, UCPD transition from a lot of things that were going on with the UCPD particularly. So while they were handling police matters, I was recruited to come up and handle everything, almost everything other than police matters, such as emergency management, which I know we're going to talk about in a little bit, but also fire safety and business continuity planning were the three legs of the stool, if you will.

[00:02:18] Darryn: Oh, I got you. I tell you what, in terms of emergency management, I know being in law enforcement, it makes perfectly good sense to me. But for those, the people outside of here, what is that? What is, I mean, what is emergency management?

[00:02:35] Ed: Yeah, emergency management, it's a term of art, if you will, of the trade. It is recognized by people in the business. That's a very good point. But I can see where people that don't do this for a living, it may be a little bit difficult to understand, or it's not quite straightforward, but. But think of emergency management as a primary coordinator. I would say. Their job is to get resources for whatever the particular event or emergency might happen to be. We like to think of ourselves or, a lot of times there's a misnomer about managing, but you're really more in a supportive role. You're trying to bring the different players together depending upon whatever the incident or, or the emergency happens to be or event. And your job is coordination and to make sure the people with the resources are able and adequately sourced, that they can do their job in support of whatever. Trying to bring, restore order from chaos is basically what we're always trying to do.

[00:03:37] Darryn: So that's interesting. So you're bringing a lot of people together in order to solve whatever the situation may be. As far as the chaos goes. 

[00:03:45] Ed: That is a key that you have to be someone to reach out and to make those connections and those relationships before the disaster ever happens. I think it was Sun Tzu said, every battle is won before it's ever fought. And there is a very good example with emergency management. If you don't have those people, and I'm talking about at the university, every department could have a role. It just depends on whatever it is. But the ones that I primarily work with are facilities management is key to everything we do. Student affairs, that's another very important one. Planning, design and construction. You know, we're very dependent upon them and our own UCPD, obviously, you know, we're, we're kind of, we are very much the core of many things going on in the university. Environmental, health and safety. So we bring those folks together regularly every two months and what we call an emergency management committee meeting, just to stay in touch. You know, hopefully we don't ever have to pull them together for a real disaster. But it's good to establish those relationships on an ongoing basis because as you both know, things change at the university. You know, bodies change, phone numbers change, people. When I was here 10 years ago, I have a lot of different faces now than when I first met and everything has to stay fresh. And, you know, there's some good examples, you know, that we've even had recently, you know, at the university where that's been key to the success of the disaster, if you will.

[00:05:17] Darryn: That makes totally good sense. I know, Kelly. I'm sorry, Kelly, but I have to ask Ed one more question. How often do you get those people together? You talk about having them meet. How often does that happen?

[00:05:28] Ed: Yeah, so we do that every two months. We start in January and then we go every two months till the end of the year. And the end of the year culminates, which, which is December for us. But we'll bring everybody together after exam week and we do what's called a disaster drill, a tabletop exercise. And what that is, you, you have a scenario that's written pre written and you bring those different departments that I talked about a little bit ago together and then you throw that scenario at them and you run it in different phases and so everybody can get on the same page and how you're going to respond or what you're going to do while you're, why certain events unfold. It might be a little bit hard to comprehend, but just think of it as a drill. It's a training exercise for the university and all the departments. Very important to the success. When we do have disasters that you've been through them before as much as possible.

[00:06:21] Kelly: So can you dive a little more into what emergency management looks like at a university? Like what unique challenges, considerations do university emergency managers have that maybe like a county emergency manager wouldn't?

[00:06:36] Ed: I think the biggest challenge is at the university our mission is to educate students and research. I think equally as much people here are doing their jobs for those two things. That's what they're being measured on and that's what they're being graded on. They're really not being graded so much on planning for emergencies. In the county, emergency management, which you just mentioned, when they do come, they are working with emergency resources such as the police department, the fire department, even waterworks and sewers and things like that, just as examples, communications. So those folks are ready and they want to see you there to plan with them, to get ready. But at the university there's different competing priorities, which makes it especially challenging. Just out of the air. Office of Research. They're focused on doing research, valuable research, and they're trying to solve things with building we're sitting in right now, 1819, you know, their goal and their mission is to be innovative and to, to solve problems for society and things like that. They, they don't want to experience emergency, but to get them to take the time adequately to prepare. That's a real challenge because we're distracting them from their primary mission and they're not being graded on it. And quite frankly, nobody's graded on how you respond in an emergency until one happens. 

Darryn:That's very true. 

Ed: Which hopefully you try to prevent them, but you don't always do so. But I think that is the singular biggest change that I've felt coming from a municipality versus a university setting.

[00:08:07] Darryn: I would agree. I had some setbacks too, coming from. It's very different, very different. And in part, I mean, I know you work on large campus events. You know what, what's your role during these big, large events such as football, basketball, things of that nature.

[00:08:25] Ed: So football is a really good one. That's where we'll not only stay within, you know, talking about the university resources a moment ago, but we'll also reach out to the traditional ones that you would deal with at the county or the municipal level. For example, when we set up the operations center for all football games or special events or graduation events, those type of things, we'll bring everybody together and everybody meaning the Ohio State Police, UC parking, Cincinnati Police, the Hamilton County Sheriff, we'll bring in UC Health, emergency medical, we'll have an established group or connection with athletics. They'll be in the operations center. Those are just a handful. But we co locate in the room and there we're operating as much as what we call a multi agency resource center. So think of it as a one stop shop. Whenever there's some problems at a particular football game, we're trying to figure it out or solve it. Often the calls will come up to the center and if the Ohio State Patrol trooper sees, you know, they see something reported to their liaison, they'll say, hey, we got a problem over on the east concourse with something. And then the Hamlet county sheriff, hey, I got two guys over there, we'll pick them up and we'll go and deal with it. So it's, it's as seamless as possible, face to face communications and eliminating the telephone game by having everybody co located in that room. It sounds very basic, but if you don't have that, things just don't run nearly as smoothly as they do if you do take the time to get that set up properly.

[00:09:56] Darryn: So you get a football game. I mean, how much planning goes into that before that Saturday? Because I know college ball is played on Saturday. Is it like a week long training or is this something that takes place before the season even starts?

[00:10:10] Ed: Both, both. And we're fortunate we have a really good special events captain. He takes it very personally. Captain Thompson, and he's got his group together and they do an outstanding job in preplanning and supporting what we try to do in the operations center, that multi agency coordination center. Because Captain Thompson knows if we're able, if we're fully staffed and we're fully supported, he knows that on game day we're going to be able to do him a lot of favors for him where he's going to be out in the field and he needs to handle things and address crises as they come up. And so we're both mutually beneficial to one another and we make sure that each other is successful in preparation for game day. So beginning of the season, athletics obviously is key to that route, to that partnership as well. So if you don't have those three legs of the stool working, that's not going to go as well as it could.

[00:11:02] Darryn: Now basketball with. I'm sorry.

[00:11:04] Kelly: No, go ahead.

[00:11:05] Darryn: Basketball. I'm such a sports guy. So sorry about that. Basketball is a little bit more smaller than football in essence of fans and the, I guess the arena is the same thing played out for basketball games. Is that location in the arena opposed to up in. To your. I call it your private sector because it's special up there.

[00:11:26] Ed: But you're exactly right, basketball being a much smaller event. The only time that I recall setting up the operations center for a basketball game was Xavier. You're talking about the one, the main university operations center. But you're exactly right, it takes place but on a smaller fashion. But right there in fifth, third arena up on the very highest level I believe in the west end of the stadium. So they sit up high. But the similar. A small microcosm of that group that I described earlier are present there and doing the same thing but just on a smaller basis. Because as you said, it's a smaller crowd, it's indoor, which takes weather pretty much off the table and then so they can work together and it's, it's just the same thing, but different. And then by different meaning a much smaller basis than what we do on a large scale event.

[00:12:17] Darryn: Gotcha.

[00:12:18] Kelly: So other than football, what types of things would you open the operations center for?

[00:12:24] Ed: Well, we've opened it for, we had a fire at Calhoun hall when I first got here. Actually let me step back from that. That's what allowed me to impress upon the powers that be we need an operations center because we can't do this in the street in our cars. We can't do this in the lobby of Calhoun hall. But we had a fire and it was this real. It was a significant fire. Just placed an entire floor for, I'm going to say months, but don't hold me to that. But that night definitely we had evacuated the hall. It was very challenging to reoccupy the hall housing was very good to work with another key partner in all this. I should have mentioned, but so for an emergency type event and a more recent fire we had over at Morgan's, we had a Christmas tree catch on fire. Now, the fire damage there wasn't nearly as extensive, so we didn't need to set up the operations center. But had it been something involved with where God forbid we would have had injury or death, then we are really going to be running on all cylinders and set up the operations center. But for other than football, we'll also set up for graduation is a big one. We'll be in there looking at cameras, just the local media for the most part, just to make sure we stay ahead of events like that for the campus protests. And you know, we've all seen them, they've, they've kind of ebb and flow, ebb and flow. But oftentimes we'll set up the operations center there as well. Again hoping nothing bad happens. But we do have pretty extensive camera network and we're always trying to improve that so that we can keep an eye on things and get ahead of it. Or equally as important, you can get information through your camera system and you can stamp out rumors. There are a lot of times you see tweets, right? People say something because they want to be the hero, the one that informed. But so oftentimes that tweeted information is not accurate and it's just the ability to talk amongst ourselves. Hey, here's what we're getting on this. Is there anything to that? We got a guy standing right there. There's nothing going on over there. It saves resources and it helps us operate more efficiently just for any number of things. So you're right, Kelly. In addition to football games, we'll do limited basketball, but we'll do graduations, campus protests, or for real emergencies, we'll go ahead and staff up the ops center.

[00:14:43] Kelly: And the emergency operations center is where the members of your advisory committee would respond to if you called them for something.

[00:14:51] Ed: Exactly right. And we've worked with the access control folks to make sure that, that certain people do have access and they can swipe in and get up there without us being there. But we'll always Be them there and be ready to go and have it set up. But yeah, it's in. That is where they are go. We've set up a list with Argonne Communications, Ted Langdon put together a nice list and we can just do a call out right now. If I said, Ted, do an EOC call out, he has a list and they'll ping him or notify him by text message and page and things, whatever they carry. And it'll be respond to the operations center because we have a fire over in Edwards 1 or whatever the case may be.

[00:15:35] Darryn: Ed, I'm glad you on our team. That's a lot going on. I mean just to rall or corral all these guys and, and ladies to get together to solve a problem. And the university is so big and so many people. Like you said, it's always changing and you got to stay ahead of the game. So man, I commend you on that.

[00:15:53] Ed: Always changing and that and that is keeping your eye on the ball. And when you bring somebody in, keep in mind there's a learning curve too. Right?

[00:16:00] Darryn and Kelly: Right.

[00:16:01] Ed: Like what is all this? You, I care for housing, I handle student problems. And it's like, well, here's the other part of the story they didn't tell you in the interview, but that's the good part. We've had a lot of stability over in a lot of places, but there has been a lot of change too, and people understand. You know, you just take time to sit down with them and explain. And that goes back to the value of meeting bimonthly. 

Darryn: Right. 

Ed: You know, you don't get too far. I think if you do it too much, that's a little overboard. But I think we are on a nice rhythm know in flow with that bimonthly approach.

[00:16:30] Kelly: So another part of your role is making sure that all the buildings on campus have an emergency plan and that departments have plans to get their department back up and running if something were to happen. So what does that look like and why is this so important to the university's operations?

[00:16:47] Ed: Yeah, very, very important. I'll. I'll start with emergency plans. Everybody be watching this podcast. Whether a student, faculty or staff or visitor, every building has an emergency plan and it has information in there, things that, you know, basic things for to some degree, such as just exits and exit ways, fire extinguishers, where those are AEDs, where those are things like that. But tornado room, where do you go in a tornado? And funny story, but not really funny. When I started here in the very beginning we had a tornado warning and it had to be in 16, 2016. That was my first year. And I was going down the hall to go to the place where you go. This was right around shifting now, five o', clock, I'll say. So you can picture staff going home and coming. So as people were asking me in the hallway, our own people, where do we go? Where do we go? Now I can say that now because that's 10 years ago. All right, so but to me that was like, oh come on guys, this is what we do. So we really took a hard look and worked real closely with Pia Washington. And you guys did both in pia putting together really solid building plans to have that information mapped out. But a plan, a paper is useless if you don't look at it beforehand. So what sometimes we'll try to do probably need to get a little better at it. And when there's especially weather type events pending, if it's relevant, say, hey, make sure you look at your building plan and have an idea where you're going to, what you're going to do if something does happen, especially if you're a faculty and you're responsible for students. To me that is, that is just so key. It can get up, you know, April, May's tornado season around here and it can go into June anymore unpredictable weather. But you really got to be aware of your building and know what's what and what's the other thing? What was second part of that question? I'm sorry?

[00:18:42] Kelly: You also work on departments to make sure they have plans to get things back up and running.

[00:18:47] Ed: So business continuity plans. And that's exactly what Kelly just described. So work with another. I have an assistant that helps me with that. We just hired her so she's getting up to speed, you know, in that position. But the role of that is to work with mostly departments and colleges. So they have a plan if there is some kind of a disruption to their basic service, if you will. So we have those right in the UCPD. We're responsible to have those plans as well. Just give you for example communication center. They just had a. We not too. Earlier this year we had an incident where they had to evacuate the center because of a malfunction in the fire alarm system. So can you imagine communications for the whole university, 911, all of that they have to on a fly, on a moment's notice, have a plan. What are we going to do if this building, we can't use it and can't occupy it and can't do Our core mission. So that plan went into effect. I mentioned Ted earlier did an outstanding job. And the people on duty that day did an outstanding job. But to relocate to the backup center, which is on the east campus. So not only just getting in your car and going over there, but having go equipment marked pre designated. What do we need to bring with us all quick, quick, quick. Because you don't have time to talk about it. You got to get and go. Right? Because in a building emergency. So picture that for every other department, if your space where you work is disrupted or not available for whatever reason, car could hit a building, you could have a major power outage. You could have a water disaster, a water pipe burst or something. You've got to find a different place to do your. Your initial business. So we use a planning model. The first 24 hours, that's temporary. You're going to be back soon, but still have a plan. And then a more extended model. So that was how we approach the space part. Then you have the staff. What if we have a major flu outbreak like now Covid affected everyone? I don't want to go down that path.

[00:20:52] Darryn: Right.

[00:20:53] Ed: You could have. You could have one where, you know it was just some kind of flu. Other type of flu pop up, whatever you want to call it. Now half your staff is not available to go to work or a tornado ripped through an area neighborhood. And maybe you lost a lot of your staff for that reason because they're dealing with things at home. So you have to have a plan. All right, what are we going to do if half of our staff doesn't come in for an extended period of time? And then the third thing leg of that stool is stuff. What are we going to do if our equipment, our computers all get stolen last night because somebody forgot to lock the door? I mean, that would never happen in public safety, but it might happen somewhere else.

[00:21:29] Darryn: We don't know.

[00:21:29] Ed: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we don't know. We don't know automatically, Darren, but. But to make sure you have a plan. Where are we going to come up with this stuff if, you know, we do get. So that's. That involves purchasing. What kind of immediate type plans could we get to replace our computers if we had that type of disaster or something like that? There's a lot more to it, but I think that. Think of it as space, staff and stuff. What happens if you lose any of those three? What are you going to do? And then succession planning. So in the event of an emergency too is very important part of that process.

[00:22:02] Darryn: Like I said, we're lucky to have Ed.

[00:22:04] Kelly: Yeah. Well, and I think that, I think the thing is, we don't know how lucky we are until we know how lucky we are, ya know.

[00:22:12] Darryn: You actually mentioned about having a plan, and I'm one of those guys. You see the plan in every building. And I kind of just glance at and keep it moving. And you're right. When the emergency happens, I'm like, uh oh, where am I at in this building? What do I do? What's next? And I think that's very important that we do pay more attention to those plans because they're placed for a reason.

[00:22:33] Ed: Yeah.

[00:22:33] Darryn: Just to make sure we can react and do the things we need to do to save lives, pretty much.

[00:22:38] Ed: That's a very good point, Darryn. And folks, listening, if you look at your plan and you're like, well, this doesn't make sense, or this do they know. A lot of times we. People will call us and say, you need to. You need to change this or fix this. And I would, please, you're not going to hurt our feelings. We want to keep them up to date as much as possible. We try to look at them often enough, but we'll take whatever help we can get from anybody watching the podcast. Very important to us.

[00:23:03] Kelly: Yeah. All right, well, I think that about wraps it up.

[00:23:07] Darryn: What? Kelly's out of questions. Kelly's never out of questions. You're the first one to say we're going to wrap this up.

[00:23:14] Kelly: Oh I could sit here for two hours. But, you know, I'm trying to be sensitive to time.

[00:23:19] Darryn: Wow. To our listeners, thank you. Thank you for tuning in. 1819 Innovation Hub. We definitely appreciate you guys for allowing us to use your studio. This has been a totally Great talk with Mr. Ed Dadowski. I appreciate it. I don't know what to say. It's kind of great. Yes. I'm out of words. Darryn Chenault is out of words. So stay tuned. We'll see you the next time. And once again, thank everybody for listening and tuning in.

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[00:00:00] Darryn Chenault: So we're back. We're back for another episode of Bridging the Gap.

Today is going to be awesome day. My name is Darryn Chenault. I'm here with my co host, Kelly Cantwell. Kelly Cantwell. Kelly, how are you doing today?

[00:00:12] Kelly Cantwell: I'm doing great. How are you, Darryn?

[00:00:14] Darryn: I'm good. I don't even know what episode is this, because we've been just moving along.

[00:00:18] Kelly: I think we're on episode seven.

[00:00:20] Darryn: Episode seven. I love it. We're crushing this. Today, our special guest. It took some time for him to get here, but it's great for him to be here. He is the chief of the University of Cincinnati Police Department. He is the director of UC Public Safety. Today we have Chief Elliot Isaac. How you doing, sir?

[00:00:43] Chief Elliot Isaac: I am great, great, great to be here with you both.

[00:00:46] Darryn: It's awesome to have you on board today. We just wanted to talk, you know, about your career. You know, how long was the journey? What was the journey like, and what interests you in working with UCPD?

[00:00:59] Chief Elliot Isaac: Well, a very long journey there. But let me begin by just saying how excited I am to be on the UC Bridging the Gap podcast. This is. You know, I'm really happy and it's a pleasure to finally make it on here. You know, as we kind of talked about this and brainstorming this idea and hearing it in the making, I mean, I think this is a wonderful thing that we get an opportunity to share about what's happening on our great campus and, you know, how we feel about taking care of our students. So talking about my career. I, I'm in my 37th year in law enforcement.

[00:01:42] Darryn: 37th?

[00:01:42] Chief Elliot Isaac: Yeah. I was really young when I started, like, you know, kind of in my. Almost as an infant, but. But a very, a very long career, one that I'm very proud of and, you know, and happy that I've been able to spend it here in the greater Cincinnati area. I began with the Cincinnati police department in 1988, came out of the police academy, went to District 4, spent my first year and a half there, and then went down to District 1 through a normal transfer and had the opportunity to do many years. I spent about eight years in District 1 where I was, I was an investigator. I was a community engagement officer. Yes. Down there doing with what we both love and, and think so highly of. I worked a little plain clothes, worked all. All three shifts and really had a wonderful time. I got promoted to sergeant in 1987. I'm sorry, 1997. And went back to District 4. Which borders our great university. Spent about two years there as a sergeant on all the shifts, then spent some time as a sergeant in the internal investigation section during that time. That was when the 2001 riots took place. So I got to see that from that perspective as a sergeant. Stayed there until 2002, where I was promoted to lieutenant. I went back to District 4.

[00:03:23] Darryn: Is that where the action is at?

[00:03:25] Chief Elliot Isaac: Went back to District 4. It sort of seems that way. I spent a good part of my early career in District 4 as a lieutenant, spending a lot of time working around the campus. Then, you know, even, you know, a few of the current supervisors that are here at UCPD, as we kind of reminisce at times that we were lieutenants together out there, dealing with some of the challenges that we deal with now. Short Vine, the crowds, a lot of those issues, you know 20 yeas ago, 25 years ago we were faced with those challenges and you know addressed them, then I was a lieutenant for a couple years. Promoted to captain in 2004, and spent about 11 years as a captain. But I had the opportunity to do a number of different things. I was the department's night chief.

Went back to District 4 as the commander for five and a half years, which was a wonderful time. Spent some time as the internal investigation section commander, the CIS commander. Worked in patrol administration until I was promoted to assistant chief. Did a multitude of things as a short time as an assistant chief and became the interim chief in 2015. Appointed permanent chief in December of 15 until February of 2022. And then I. I retired in February of 22 from the city and joined the university here in April of 2022 and haven't looked back. So it's been. Been a wonderful time. 

[00:05:10] Darryn: Chief I gotta. I gotta chime in. You got a lot of miles on you.

[00:05:13] Chief Elliot Isaac: A lot of miles.

[00:05:15] Darryn: And then yet you come to the University of Cincinnati. Like nobody at home said, “hey, stop. We're done, let's retire.”

[00:05:23] Chief Elliot Isaac: Yeah, we had those conversations, but you find yourself thinking, you know, I still have a little more in the tank. I'm not. I'm not ready. You start this career so young, and, you know, it's hard to retire in your 50s. You know, you're not quite ready to be totally done working. You want to do a little bit more, and, and this opportunity came, and it gave me the opportunity to stay close to Cincinnati, you know, where I had spent my entire career, where I was raised and. And having, you know, some familiarity with the university and what happens around the university. I thought this was definitely a godsend and was happy to. To apply for the position and get it. And, you know, it's been. It's been wonderful. It allows me to stay connected to my community, the, the people that I know, the relationships and professional connections that I've made over the years, and, you know, bring that to the university to help us keep our campus safe.

[00:06:33] Kelly: Well, let's talk about campus safety. What does crime look like on and around the University of Cincinnati?

[00:06:42] Chief Elliot Isaac: You know, I think we're in a great place, but we're not unique to what happens in most major cities. UC is an urban university, and we have our challenges in the surrounding areas. One thing I'll say is I'll start talking about inside the perimeters of campus. I think we have a very safe campus. I'm very proud of the work that the men and women of UCPD do. I think our students are very well taken care of.

And when we're on campus, I think that everyone is very, very, very secure. We're very mindful of how we proceed, how we take care of the students, staff, and faculty. But the thing that I always caution is that you have to be mindful. You know, we're in an urban university, and we're not, we're not immune to the challenges that happen, you know, around an urban university. I think we, there are a lot of different  dynamics. You have people that come into the community that look for opportunities to take advantage of students. You know, so important that we educate them and help. Help them to be very mindful about their safety. A lot of things that take place, we see a large amount of property crime, cars being broken into. You know, we went through a period where certain types of cars were being stolen, and, you know, students were falling victim to a lot of that. And, you know, we have to continue to help educate them on how to be safe.

[00:08:23] Darryn: I agree. That's where that best unit, that community engagement unit, comes in, where we educate. Hey, talk about the relationship between the University of Cincinnati Police Department and the City of Cincinnati's police department. You have to have a unique perspective being on that side and now on this side with us.

[00:08:41] Chief Elliot Isaac: Yeah, I've been blessed with the best of both worlds. You know, a long career with the city and now, you know, getting some mileage under my belt here at UCPD. And I'm very proud of both agencies. And, you know, I think we, we're fortunate here that we really have a very seamless dynamic between CPD and UCPD. We. We've worked a number of years on developing an MOU, a memorandum of understanding that allows UCPD officers to have concurrent jurisdiction in the city limits around a specified area around campus in certain situations or when requested by cpd. So we're able to, if asked by CPD, to intervene, to take law enforcement action outside the perimeter of campus, all except for traffic enforcement, except in emergency situations. If it's an emergency situation, then we can take it, take action on traffic, but only in emergency situations. But if there's a call for service in what we call the area surrounding campus, the, that designated area, if asked by CPD, we can. We can take action.

[00:10:09] Darryn: That sounds great. Sounds great.

[00:10:12] Kelly: Can you dive a little bit more into what UCPD does and does not do off campus? Because I feel like that is one of the things we get a lot of questions about.

[00:10:21] Chief Elliot Isaac: You know, I think that we run into a lot of challenges at times where a citizen or a student who lives off campus, they'll, they'll want to call in a call for service, and they want to designate who responds. Well, I don't want CPD respond. I want UCPD to respond. And it really doesn't work that way. CPD has the jurisdiction, but we can assist. But then again, there are times when CPD is more than eager to have UCPD intervene. If it's an incident involving our students, say an off campus party or some other kind of camp activity off campus that involves a large number of students, they find that, you know, we're able to have a greater impact if UCPD responds rather than CPD. 

[00:11:19] Darryn: That makes sense. That definitely makes sense. Tell me this. What was the hardest thing for you when you left the city and coming up to UC, did you find any barriers that you had to go through?

[00:11:30] Chief Elliot Isaac: No, it was just a matter of, I think, refocusing. You know, the difference in the two is when you're in the city, you're taking care of 52 neighborhoods and all of the issues that take place in 52 neighborhoods and the large number of people that you're dealing with, you know, here on campus, you're focused on the students, staff and faculty. You know, everything that we all do is in support of our students really being able to obtain the education that they've come here for. So we want to make sure that that's a safe and productive time for them. And also just not having the volume of calls that our officers can take the time to make sure that they're meeting the needs of our students. If one of our students has an issue or find themselves involved in a situation, we can take the extra time and make sure that that matter is fully addressed because we don't have calls for service stacked upon us waiting.

[00:12:34] Darryn: That definitely makes sense. Wow. It seems like you've done a couple of these interviews before.

[00:12:40] Chief Elliot Isaac: I've done a few. No, no, I've done a few. And, you know, you don't. You don't get long in the tooth and not have the opportunity to do this. And, you know, I just like to take the opportunity to just really share how, how impressed I am at what's done at UCPD. I think it goes unnoticed oftentimes because we're, we're in our own, our own entity, and a lot of it's not covered in the media and the things. But our officers do tremendous work, and not just the, just the police officers, the support staff and the rest of the team that really makes this university safe. You can't, you can't be a successful place in any entity if you're not safe. And in making sure that people feel safe, that people are actually able to perform their functions without being in fear or in danger, it really makes a huge difference.

[00:13:43] Kelly: So you touched a little bit earlier on. Well, Darryn asked about the differences working for UCPD versus the city, and I imagine some of those differences are also that we're just. We're not just the police. It's public safety, so we have a lot of other components. Was that an adjustment for you as well?

[00:14:03] Chief Elliot Isaac: You know, so, you know, not. Not so much, because at the city, we had a lot of different functions that we performed, too. But, you know, taking on some different duties here for me, has had a little bit of different, you know, some of the fire safety responsibility, the access control, all of those things fall under, you know, the umbrella of public safety here at the university. But they so closely touch one another that. And I've had such an amazing staff and support team that have helped me to acclimate to lead public safety. It's, it's truly been, you know, a pleasure to, to be here.

[00:14:46] Darryn: That's great. I, I know I get a chance to talk to a lot of officers during my day, and we talk about just the leadership, and everybody respects the leadership role that. That you do and how you carry yourself. So I just wanted to take the time to let you know that, that the officers definitely respect how you command the ship, so to speak. So we, we appreciate that.

[00:15:07] Chief Elliot Isaac: Greatly appreciate it. Definitely.

[00:15:09] Darryn: I'm always in a rush to tie up loose ends, but I know Kelly probably has another question. And she always does. I know you do. That's why I wanted to say it out loud.

[00:15:18] Kelly: All right, so what efforts? You know, UCPD, like you said earlier, we have time to make sure that things are fully followed through on, but we also have time to take on projects. Yes, for safety. So can you talk about some of the efforts that UCPD makes to address safety?

[00:15:38] Chief Elliot Isaac: You know, I think what we've seen in recent months and years is just the overall conversation about safety around campus, in the area immediately off campus, in the area within one or two blocks of campus. And I think that that's something that the university is really taking a hard look at and really trying to take opportunities to help that area feel much more part of the university. And, you know, I think the key is for us to have a larger footprint in those areas. You know, we talk about Short vine, what we've seen this past summer with the volume of people that have just been out in those areas, you know, large numbers that we've not seen in a number of years. But now we're seeing that maybe some displacement from other parts of the city. But, you know, when you have record enrollment at a university and, you know, and you start to become the happening thing, so more people come, and that creates more challenges. We've had a couple tragic incidents. You know, we had a, we did have a homicide earlier in the year, and we had an incident around Halloween where shots were fired on Short vine, you know, in a particular area. And you just really have to give attention to, you know, what that looks like and how you can try to address that in the future. I mentioned the university trying to have, you know, a larger footprint. You know, you can do that by trying to acquire some of the spaces that may traditionally be problem locations. I know we had a liquor permit premise on Short vine that has, historically, since I was a young cop, many, many years ago, that there were challenges, you know, when that place became available, the university leases it, they create, they're creating a bike kitchen, and it'll also be a substation for officers there on Short Vine. Change the look of what it is, you know, looking for opportunities to acquire other spaces that students can have opportunities for their meetings. And, you know, that's one of the things that when I get the opportunity that I encourage that, you know, we need to, we need to help the businesses change the look. You know, we're, they're, they want to cater to the students, but let's make it friendly to the students. Let's make it safe to the students. So, you know, those are the thoughts that are in mind.

[00:18:13] Darryn: That's awesome. I know we're short on time here because I know you carry a busy schedule, but at the end of the day, we appreciate your time. We appreciate everything that you're doing for the university as a whole. So thanks for coming out today. Obviously, being the top cop at UC. Is there anything you want to share with the students, faculty and staff here at the university before we wrap this up?

[00:18:36] Chief Elliot Isaac: Well, thanks for having me, but I would definitely like to share that for all the student, staff and faculty. Always know in mind that. That their safety is of paramount importance to us. That's why we're here. We wouldn't exist if we didn't have that need to make sure that we're taking care of their needs. So I always feel that public safety is here for them in any capacity. If we don't know the answer, we'll find it out for you. So that's what I tell all the team. And you guys have probably heard me say it. If you do nothing else, just be helpful. You may not know the answer, but be helpful. People always appreciate someone who's just trying to be helpful.

[00:19:18] Darryn: I appreciate it. I appreciate it. We're gonna end it on that note.

[00:19:21] Chief Elliot Isaac: Yeah.

[00:19:22] Darryn: Thanks again.

[00:19:23] Kelly: Thank you, chief.

[00:19:23] Chief Elliot Isaac: All right. Thank you both.

[00:19:25] Darryn: Just before we leave, we wanna thank 1819 Innovation Hub for their time again. Love everything that you guys do for us. And we'll see you next. Next time on Bridging the Gap. Have a good one.

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[00:00:00] Darryn Chenault: We're back for another episode of Bridging the Gap today. Obviously you're going to notice that my co host is not here today. She's fighting a illness, but we're going to continue on. I hope she feels well and I'm sure shortly she'll be back. So I'm going to miss her and all that good stuff. 

Today we're going to dive right into it. We're going to talk about some things through IACLEA and we're going to have a good conversation. 

I got some friends down from the state of Ohio, which I'm always happy to see, but we're going to start by introduction. So I'm going to start with John Dejarnette to my far right. If you can tell us a little bit about yourself, where you came from and how you got here. 

 

[00:00:41] John Dejarnette: All right, thanks, Darryn. Yeah, as he said, I'm John Dejarnette. I'm the chief of staff here at UC Public Safety. I actually been here for 10, 11 years now. 

Came in 2015. I actually came to UC when my daughter went to college. When my daughter went to college, I went with her. And so she's since graduated and got her master's degree from uc. So I had some skin in the game when I first came here as far as safety concerns. And still I'm still here and she's long gone. 

 

[00:01:13] Darryn Chenault: So you came for the tuition remission yourself too, huh? 

 

[00:01:16] John Dejarnette: A little bit of that was one reason for sure. That was very nice benefit that UC blessed me with. 

 

[00:01:21] Darryn Chenault: So. Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. My next guest. 

 

[00:01:25] Ed Burkhammer: I'm Ed Burkhammer. I am the Director of Law Enforcement Services for the Office of Criminal Justice Services under the Department of Public Safety.  

A long title, but I'm a retired law enforcement officer and I oversee a couple of statewide initiatives that involve our local law enforcement agencies across the state.  

And we created the Ohio Collaborative Law Enforcement Accreditation Program, which we're here to talk about today. 

 

[00:01:56] Darryn Chenault: You know, Ed, with a lot, a long title, which you just said you had, comes a lot of responsibility. So I take it you got a lot of responsibility with that long title you got, huh? 

 

[00:02:05] Ed Burkhammer: Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, but it's a, it's good responsibility, right? 

 

[00:02:10] Darryn Chenault: I love it. 

 

[00:02:10] Ed Burkhammer: It's a passion. It's something I love to do. I'm blessed. And you know, I mean, honestly, I have to say this, you know, right up front is the we're blessed.  

We're all here because Leadership at Public Safety and The governor's office, Governor DeWine, are supporters of this and has pushed us all to take place and allowed it to take place. You know what I mean? 

 

[00:02:30] Darryn Chenault: I totally agree with you. Yeah, Totally agree. Charity. 

 

[00:02:33] Charity Detty-Wingo: Hi. 

 

[00:02:34] Darryn Chenault: How are you? 

 

[00:02:34] Charity Detty-Wingo: Good, good. My name is Charity Detty-Wingo. I am a program manager with on Ed's team. I've been given the opportunity to work with UCPD directly and their accreditation, and so I'm excited to work with them. 

 

[00:02:51] Darryn Chenault: See, Charity, I would have got your last name wrong, so I'm glad you said your last name. 

 

[00:02:54] Charity Detty-Wingo: I went hyphenated when I got married, so that's. It throws everybody off. 

 

[00:02:58] Darryn Chenault: All the viewers know I butcher a last name, so thank you for that. 

 

[00:03:02] Charity Detty-Wingo: You're welcome. 

 

[00:03:03] Darryn Chenault: Nikki. 

 

[00:03:04] Nicole Haberer: So I am Nicole Haberer. I am the Clery compliance specialist with Public Safety. I'm the only civilian and I've been here for. It'll be 25 years in December. 

 

[00:03:16] Darryn Chenault: That's awesome. That's awesome. You love it? 

 

[00:03:19] Nicole Haberer: I do. That's why I'm still here. 

 

[00:03:22] Darryn Chenault: I had to ask that question. Well, we're gonna dive right into it. I am. I'm kind of curious at this. UC has gone through an accreditation process like this before. Can you tell me a little bit about the history of accreditation here at the university and the agents? What are we getting from this? What's the agency gaining from this? John? 

 

[00:03:43] John Dejarnette: That's a good question. You know, I like to try to get people excited about accreditation. Sometimes it's hard, but I think if you look at it this way, especially from our audience, the University of Cincinnati is accredited, right? The university is accredited. And that's part of what gives the degree some oomph behind it. Right. If you say you got a degree from the University of Cincinnati, what does that mean? Right. Well, if you're accredited, that means there's rigorous standards about how we're teaching and those kind of things. That gives your degree that push behind it. Something behind it. And the same thing with hospitals. A lot of hospitals are accredited, and the same thing goes for that, is that if you got a choice between sending your loved one to an accredited hospital or not accredited hospital, which one are you going to choose? Right? And it's the same thing. There's rigorous standards about how they clean their surgery tools and just everything about it, the leadership and how they operate. And so with that being said, accreditation for police agencies is similar in the fact that there's an organization outside of the organization itself that develops standards, it's best practices in the game, and then they bring those standards to your organization and say, if you want to be accredited, you have to adhere to these. And so the key thing part of it is that they have the policies that address things like training and use of force and all these different areas of law enforcement. But then you also have to prove it. Right. You can't just say, well, we have this policy that says we do this, this and this and close the book. You got to show and demonstrate that those things are occurring in the way you say you're going to do it. 

 

[00:05:31] Darryn Chenault: Now, who comes down and checks this policy is this house or so. 

 

[00:05:35] John Dejarnette: Yeah. So anyway, yeah, they have what they call assessors that come in, and those are the people that come in and kind of lift the hood and look underneath and check the paperwork and look at your vehicles and look at your facilities and all that kind of stuff to make sure that it's not just a check the box.  

It's actually someone that comes in from outside your organizations and verifies what you do. And it's kind of that inspect what you expect idea. 

 

[00:06:04] Darryn Chenault: So I don't know if I missed this or not, but how long has the university had this accreditation? Has it been for years or has it been a short period of time? 

 

[00:06:14] John Dejarnette: So we were accredited by an organization called IACLEA, which is the International association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. 

 

[00:06:24] Darryn Chenault: That was a test for you, wasn't it?  

 

[00:06:26] John Dejarnette: Yeah, exactly. 

 

[00:06:26] Darryn Chenault:  it was a test for me. 

 

[00:06:27] John Dejarnette: Back in 2019, we got our first accreditation, so that was obviously something we were very proud of. And then we got reaccredited back in 2023. 

 So we've been reaccredited one time as well. So we've got a few years of experience now and it's become part of our culture to adhere to these standards. And that's the good thing when you achieve accreditation. But really the test is, can you make it part of your culture and the way you do business right now? 

 

[00:06:58] Darryn Chenault: Do you, I guess. Do you, are you doing this or do you bring people in like Nikki to help out? Or is this a collaboration of the whole department? 

 

[00:07:07] John Dejarnette: Yeah, so I, I, I was designated as the first accreditation manager, and since then I was promoted to chief of staff. So I've been wearing kind of two hats. But yes, I've part of my, as a leader, I want to be part of development of our staff. And so Nicole is fantastic. She's our Clery, as she said, she's our Clery compliance specialist. And what we want to do is make her the accreditation manager and Clery manager. So. But it's a Development piece. She's fantastic at what she does. She's our expert in Clery. And so soon she's going to be our expert in accreditation as well. And she's been fantastic. So. But yeah, so we, like I said about culture too, I'll throw this in real quick. That we have developed, you know, with my investigations lieutenant, with my community engagement lieutenant, with the property room manager, all those people, they know what's expected of them now in terms of accreditation. And now it's pretty much a well oiled machine in terms of they know what we need for accreditation, they do it, that they achieve it. And so early on it was kind of like holding their hand and that kind of thing. Now it's just again,it's become culture. It's the way we do business. 

 

[00:08:22] Darryn Chenault: Now, Nikki, if I can ask you real quick, ucpd, what do they hope to gain from this? I hear that he's bringing you into this fold. Correct? 

 

[00:08:31] Nicole Haberer: Yes. 

 

[00:08:31] Darryn Chenault: What is one thing that they would like to get out of this whole thing besides recognition? 

 

[00:08:36] Nicole Haberer: Well, making sure that we are doing things with best practice. We want to show everybody we're transparent, we're doing what we say we're going to do and just making sure that, you know, when we have a policy we are backing it and saying we actually are doing this to show. 

 

[00:08:58] Darryn Chenault: Oh, I get it. I totally get it. And you doing Clery stuff, actually we're going to have a show with you just by yourself. Because I know that's a different ball game. 

 

[00:09:06] Nicole Haberer: Sure is. 

 

[00:09:06] Darryn Chenault: Because when I got through the university and I came here, I didn't know what Clery was. Somebody had to sit me down and be like, what is this? 

So Ed, can you, can you kind of jump in and kind of help me out with the whole overall, with the accreditation and stuff like that. It's. How do you see yourself fitting into this whole thing? 

 

[00:09:24] Ed Burkhammer: Yeah. Well, first of all, I want to say thank you for saying he talked about culture. Culture is so important and people overlook it. So I think you, you can tell leadership when you hear someone talk about culture because it's one of the most important things. So accreditation is a little bit. In Ohio. Ohio did not have a law enforcement accreditation program, which those of us in law enforcement, if you think about it, when we get into the field, we go to an academy, we get an Ohio police officer training academy certification. We have to do certain things to maintain that certification. But there's no requirement for agencies to maintain certain things. And if there are, there are very few. Right. They're Very random. And you know, there is national accreditation available, but only about 5% of the agencies in the country, law enforcement agencies, are able to meet national accreditation. And for a variety of reasons. And a few years back when I was trying to create this program for Ohio, that's one of the first things leadership in Ohio realized. We don't have this available in Ohio, and it's really needed for our local law enforcement agencies. As the state, we look at ourselves as that support network to the locals. We started talking about how that would look. And through some other networking, 

I've been in several places around the country, and I looked at what they were doing in other states and, and nationally on the national level, and I saw what I thought they were doing well, and I didn't think they were doing so well. 

 

[00:11:00] Darryn Chenault: Right. 

 

[00:11:01] Ed Burkhammer: And so then we did a national survey to see what are the barriers if a law enforcement agency wants to get into accreditation?

What are the first barriers you face? And the biggest three results we got were cost, time and personnel. 

 

[00:11:17] Darryn Chenault: You agree when you say cost, cost as far as. 

 

[00:11:22] Ed Burkhammer: So there is a financial cost to being in an accreditation program, and they're all a little bit different. But some require you have a membership fee, some require a membership application fee. Then there's an annual fee. Pardon me, Some require that you have a dedicated staff, which is then a salary component, salary and benefits component, that they have to be dedicated to that position. And then if I didn't mention annual fees, so you're constantly paying for that. Then John mentioned the assessors. So assessors are at an expense. So that is the expense of the locality to pay for that. So you have assessors come from somewhere, some come from across the country. So you're paying their travel per diem and rate for them to come in and evaluate and assess your agency. Right. So, you know, I mentioned it. Our leadership in Ohio understood that we can create a program like that and we can follow the pattern across the country or we can do it differently and do it bigger and better. So our first priority is it's free. 

 

[00:12:31] Darryn Chenault: And that's where I was going to get to, because when you said it comes with a cost, you know, the smaller departments, they're going to struggle with that cost. So I get it that we're very blessed at the University of Cincinnati because we're a university and we're thriving and all that good stuff.  

But for the smaller departments, how does that impact them? Charity? 

 

[00:12:52] Charity Detty-Wingo: I mean, we're readily available to them. We're not only offering the program for free. We, the operating system that we use to manage their, their files is free. That was developed, started development on that what, two years ago. And as I was hired on two years ago, so I kind of seen that all the way through.  

We do agency visits. We do the one on one help agencies through any other accreditation program you're going to. That's going to be a cost again associated with that. We're given that opportunity to do anytime that we need to or the agency needs us to within, you know, our availability, they can call us. I mean. 

 

[00:13:36] Darryn Chenault: Yeah, I got you. 

 

[00:13:37] Charity Detty-Wingo: So I mean, and we offer the same services from the very smallest agency with one person that we do for 7-800 people. 

 

[00:13:45] Darryn Chenault: Okay. 

 

[00:13:46] Charity Detty-Wingo: It doesn't deviate. 

 

[00:13:47] Darryn Chenault: That kind of hit me when he said calls because I know I left a small department and they, you know, they're in shambles and you wonder how they can kind of afford all this stuff because like I said, I know John and his staff does a great job at the university as far as bringing people in and mom and dads and students and faculty and staff. They should be proud of this because this is something to lean their hat on. So what, what's the unique. 

 

[00:14:11] John Dejarnette: Can I add one more thing about cost? Another thing that can be a cost is facilities because they're standards. You know, like for example, property rooms is a big example where, you know, we know how important it is when someone has evidence that it follows the chain of custody to get to court. You know, if it's evidence against me, I want to make sure that it was, you know, handled properly and all that. Well, there's a lot of standards behind that, the security of property and that kind of thing. Well, you know, if you have to do those things to build a secure property room, that can be some, some cost associated with that.  

And one of these accrediting bodies say if you're going to have a property room, you need to do A, B, C and D. Well, that's, you know, that's cost. So it could be cost of personnel, facilities, that kind of thing, to at least be at that standard. So that's another potential cost issue. 

 

[00:15:00] Darryn Chenault: Didn't realize that. What makes your program so unique in comparison to other states? 

 

[00:15:06] Ed Burkhammer: A lot of things. 

 

[00:15:08] Darryn Chenault: Brag a little bit. This is your turn to brag. 

 

[00:15:10] Ed Burkhammer: Listen, I mean when I say I really did a deep dive into what's available nationally and, and I one of my other positions, I served as the president of a, of a national organization called AccredNet and that's actually represents every state director in the country that runs programs like we have. And so I have a good, you know, inside information to what's, what's going well in their, their programs and what's not. And, and I'm going to go right back to again, cost. So the very first burden that Ohio's leadership erased was the need to run it as a, for a pro, a profit. Like we don't have to do that. And so we eliminate those costs right away. The other thing that they have done, this is unique is that again, my bosses don't get in my way and they let me have all these crazy ideas we come up with when we're out there. And she's talking to an agency and she's. To your point, the small agency. She's talking to a small agency and they don't have their property room is in shambles or whatever it is and they don't have resources. They just can't write a check to fix this. We provide the resources to fix that and we have created a network across the state at no cost that's big and that's expanding every day. By the way, we're still, we're not sitting on our laurels. We're growing these resources every day. Charity and her teammates position is extremely unique in this country. So an agency could hire an outside person who's a subject matter expert to come in higher cost. 

 

[00:16:52] Darryn Chenault: Right. 

 

[00:16:53] Ed Burkhammer: And have them come in and give you advice. We provide that at no cost to the agency. 

 

[00:16:57] Darryn Chenault: So Charity has her own team? 

 

[00:16:59] Ed Burkhammer: she's a member of the team now this is part of the team.  So the program manager, Charity gets assigned to an agency. So UCPD is her agency in our eyes and, and their job, they're building this relationship that if we can help, we don't say no, we don't say here's the book. And this is the limit of our resources. We come in and we say where can we help and where can we go with it? Now before I forget, I want to comment that what we get back is this is a partnership with UC. Okay.  

So this is not just us coming in and doing this. We're going to learn from them. We learn from every agency we deal with because they're unique. UCPD's unique.

Your university police department, large agency and you're talking about small agencies. We want. I'm a believer that I don't care if you're a police officer in a five officer department.  Our citizens deserve to have a great police officer. Absolutely right. I agree with that. Not just a UC accredited police officer, whatever village, township, city in this state, you deserve to have a good police officer. And we also owe a debt to our police officers. We hire them, tell them we're going to take care of them, train them or protect them. And then we fail in that in a lot of ways. Right. So this is a way to give them guidance as well. 

 

[00:18:20] Darryn Chenault: And the special thing you said about that is we have a lot of kids come from a lot of different places at the university, so some are already terrified of law enforcement in general when they get here and they don't trust us. So what you just said is huge. I mean, putting the number one person out there to handle these situations is why you guys come into play and kind of help us with that whole thing. So that's huge. I appreciate you saying that. John, you once again, you talked about, you know, having this relationship and building this relationship and you and your team, Nicole, you guys kind of work on things. What's the hardest thing about doing this whole accreditation, like when you work with your team? Is it. 

 

[00:19:02] John Dejarnette: I don't know that I would say anything is hard. Sometimes it is difficult to help people understand because sometimes you can feel like people can get in the rut of. Well, let's just check the box. And one of the examples I like to illustrate is several years ago when I got involved in accreditation, one of the requirements is that you do an annual use of force review. Right? And it's not just every use of force gets investigated and looked at on a one on one basis, like, you know, was this justified? Did we use the training, did we adhere to policies, all those things. But most agencies wouldn't take a global look at the end of the year and say, okay, we had seven uses of force and you know, this many was, you know, use of this weapon and this was that and this, you know, and what was the racial makeup?

Was there a trend, you know, anything that we can do for training? Right. And so, so one of my stories I like to tell is when we looked at a global look at uses of force, we realized that when we had injuries and uses of force, a lot of people think it's going to be like using an ASP baton or pepper spray or tasers or all this stuff. It was actually in a takedown. So an officer or a citizen was hurt in a takedown. And at the time you're. It was interesting, you know, how much training we did on takedowns when we were doing our use of force training. 

 

[00:20:28] Darryn Chenault: Uh oh, uh, oh,  

 

[00:20:29] John Dejarnette: zero.  

 

[00:30:50] Darryn Chenault I knew it was coming, uh, oh. 

 

[00:32:13] John Dejarnette: So, you know, as leadership team, we look at that and we say, okay, this is clear that this is where people are getting hurt. How can we change that? 

And so we immediately implemented some takedown training, how to do it safely, so that in those moments when that happens, hopefully citizens, like he said about the best police officer showing up at the scene, he's trained in how to do a safe takedown. And hopefully he's not. He's not getting. He or she's not getting hurt. The citizens are not getting hurt. And we hopefully, when we look at the. When we do our use of force review the following year, hopefully that number has come down. And that's how we say, were we effective? You know, and that kind of thing. And that's the spirit of accreditation is, okay, we do a lot of good things. How can we do it better?  

And I think that's sometimes a difficulty to convey to others that, you know, that's why we do what we do. It's not a check the box is to do better. 

 

[00:21:29] Darryn Chenault: So when I first got to uc, that takedown that I had was not appropriate, I take it.  

 

[00:21:34] John Dejarnette: Probably not the one you Darryn.  

 

[00:21:36] Darryn Chenault: Okay. We do some work because I thought it was a great takedown. 

 

[00:21:40] John Dejarnette: That's why. There's another thing in accreditation called remedial training. 

 

[00:21:43] Darryn Chenault: I hear you on that. And no, by the way, I did not do a takedown. I kind of rely on my verbal cues to get me through things. So Charity or Ed, how many agencies have you accredited in this program and how many are currently in the process of getting accredited? And I know that's a broad number. 

 

[00:22:08] Ed Burkhammer: So this is a. So we run certification program as well. So certification was created, and we actually started certifying agencies in 2016. It was created by executive order in 2015 and then.  But we didn't actually start the accreditation program until two years ago under Governor DeWine. And so we have gone at lightning speed in the creation of it, the development of it. Like, I mean, we didn't even have a staff that was able to, you know, do it at the time. So I was, you know, we were creating the program and. And writing out what we needed and doing everything and hiring people at the same time. And I was very picky about how we brought people in, but. But in that time frame. So since 2024, and I'll tell you, it was March 21st of 2024, we had our event with Governor DeWine. That was our launch. 

So here we are. We're less than 24 months later, in our phase one, in phase one of our accreditation, we did 10 agencies. We kind of tested the waters with 10 agencies, and we picked them from around the state, and they're from various backgrounds, various sizes, various resource allocation. So we wanted to make sure. My goal has always been. Our goal has always been make this program fit every law enforcement agency in Ohio that has the culture that is willing to make change. Right. And if they're willing to try, we're willing to try. So we did 10 agencies in that first phase. And then. And we have now at our November board meeting, we had six agencies reach accredited status. And then next week, actually, we have eight more agencies going before the board. If the board favorably votes for those eight agencies, that six from November and eight from this next week will be on the stage with us. In April, we run an annual conference, by the way, it's called the Pathways to Excellence Summit. 

It's called Pathways to Excellence because we are belief that we're constantly on that pursuit. 

 

[00:24:11] Darryn Chenault: Okay. It was his vision. Huh? 

 

[00:24:13] Charity  Detty-Wingo: Tell them about your vision? 

 

[00:24:14] Ed Burkhammer: We're constantly on that pursuit of, you should always, in your career and your personal life and your family, you should be on a career of path to excellence. Right. And that's something that we strive for. And we also realize we're never going to achieve perfection. 

 

[00:24:29] Darryn Chenault: Right. But that's the goal. 

 

[00:24:30] Ed Burkhammer: But that's the goal, like. And you have to be open to it and change. But that's. So the long story to your answer is, so that'll put us at 26 agencies.  

And in the process, we have quite a list. I think part of it. One of the things I'm most heartened by is that leaders like this all over the state are reaching out and saying, come judge us. 

 

[00:24:56] Darryn Chenault: Leaders like, oh, John DeJarnette. Oh, okay. Over here. Okay. I just wanted to be clear. JOHN DeJarnette, CHIEF OF STAFF this guy. 

 

[00:25:06] Ed Burkhammer: But I mean. Okay, but I do mean that we have chiefs and sheriffs from all over the state. We have lieutenant sergeants, patrol officers reaching out and saying every day we want our department to be great. And I say it means a lot for an agency to open their doors to criticism that they don't have to open their doors to. 

 

[00:25:24] Darryn Chenault: That's awesome. 

 

[00:25:26] Ed Burkhammer: That's leadership to me. Right. And I'm so proud of Ohio's law enforcement, because if we go back 10 years, this was also. It was a different atmosphere. And, you know, we had a number of leaders across the state who felt like that. But I think in today, in 2026, we have a overwhelming number of law enforcement leaders who want to be great. 

 

[00:25:47] Darryn Chenault: That's awesome. I mean, that's. That's something that you want to hear. And don't get me wrong, I know we joke all the time, but from our chief all the way down, Chief Eliot Isaac, to John Dejarnette, all the way down to the patrolman or security, I think everybody wants to lead and that's. But they get it from the top, though. So, Charity, what's the number one thing? I know we may be running out of time here, but what's the number one thing that you love about your job?  

Like, what stands out? I mean, something wakes you up every day and says, hey, I want to do this. 

 

[00:26:19] Charity Detty-Wingo: The agencies I work with, absolutely, hands down, them. I develop these relationships with these agencies, and they're my friends. They're not just, I work with this agency or that work with that agency. It's the relationships that I get to build with these agencies all over the state. I'm fortunate enough to have agencies from a five man agency to a thousand man agency. So I get all different perspectives and develop different relationships with different agencies.  

And I love that. That's my very favorite. 

 

[00:26:52] Darryn Chenault: That's beautiful, John. I'm a parent. We're gonna wrap this up here. And I, Kelly, used to get on me a lot. Cause when I say I'm wrapping it up, that means another 10 minutes. I'm a parent of two daughters who goes to the school here at the university. And I know we talked about a lot, accreditation and all this stuff.  

What if you're talking to me as a parent, what's making me feel so good about this whole picture of accreditation and everything that you guys are doing at the university and working with the good people at the state? Like, 

 

[00:27:23] John Dejarnette: Yeah, it kind of comes full circle to what I started with, you know, when I talked about a hospital or, you know, the university.  

And that accreditation piece is just, you know, if you're sending your loved ones out to, you know, you're trusting us with your children when you send them to college.  

Right. And so you want to know that the people that are out there looking after them are just top quality. And so, you know, that's what we try to be, is that top quality. And I do get it because like I said, I had a daughter that went here and, you know, she was out, you know, at parties and, you know, all the things that college kids do. And so I wanted, you know, it was good to know that there's Officers out there that are fully trained and on the lookout for any indicators that where safety. Her safety might be compromised. So that's what I would say. 

 

[00:28:15] Darryn Chenault: Ed, Charity, anything you will share with the good people at the University of Cincinnati. As far as faculty, staff, and parent? 

 

[00:28:21] Ed Burkhammer: you know, I'll just. I'll reiterate that they should be proud. I'm also a parent who sent my kids off to college, right. And I had these fears. Pardon me.  

I had these exact same fears. And I think it means a lot to a parent that shows that as a university, you take it seriously, that you realize you're taking on their kids their most precious item. Right? And crime can happen anywhere. But we have to do our give every resource to be the best police department we can be to not only protect them, but then on the other side, we also have to give our police officers the best chance of being good police officers. Right? And if we don't give them that proper guidance and support and take care of their mental wellness and you know what I mean with some things we didn't do in the past comes out of accreditation, all that creates that culture and an environment here that's better to safe place to put your kids. 

 

[00:29:24] Darryn Chenault: That's huge. He said it all. 

 

[00:29:27] Charity Detty-Wingo: He said it all. 

 

[00:29:28] Darryn Chenault: He said it all. Nikki, you excited about all this? I hear you're gonna be the one that putting a lot of the stuff on here at the university. 

 

[00:29:36] Nicole Haberer: I'm excited. I'm glad and eager to add to my resume of what I can do. And there's a lot of organization, and I love my organization so. 

 

[00:29:46] Darryn Chenault: I've seen you work and you do a lot too. Don't get me wrong. You stand out. 

 

[00:29:51] John Dejarnette: She's fantastic. 

 

[00:29:52] Darryn Chenault: No doubt. And that's coming from your leader. That's coming from your leader. So we appreciate everybody's time today. And like I said, I know you guys are coming from Columbus, and thank you for coming down. Safe travels, going home. Definitely want to say thanks to 1819 Innovation Hub for having us today to talk about all the good things that IACLEA is doing and. And the way the university is taking off in so many different directions. So we love you, appreciate you to our fans, thank you for watching and tune in for the next time.

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[00:00:00] Darryn Chenault: Happy New Year! We're back. 

2026. We're here with Bridging the Gap. I am your host, Darryn Chenault and I'm here with 

[00:00:09] Kelly Cantwell: Kelly Cantwell. 

[00:00:12] Darryn Chenault: How you doing, Kelly? 

[00:00:13] Kelly Cantwell: I'm doing great. How are you, Darryn? 

[00:00:14] Darryn Chenault: I'm doing well. 2026. I'm awesome. 

[00:00:17] Kelly Cantwell: Lovely. 

[00:00:18] Darryn Chenault: We are here with two rock stars today. I love it. I love it. We're here with miss, it warms my heart to say this, Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas. 

[00:00:30] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: Thank you. 

[00:00:31] Darryn Chenault: Along with Noah. 

I'm messing it up already, Rezene. 

[00:00:36] Noah Rezene: You got it. 

[00:00:38] Darryn Chenault: Two people that help us out in public safety and life is good. But Kelly's gonna correct me. I promise you, in 2026, she's not gonna correct me. So with that being said, Kelly, I'm gonna let. 

[00:00:50] Kelly Cantwell: Let them introduce themselves? 

[00:00:52] Darryn Chenault: Yes. 

[00:00:53] Kelly Cantwell: Look at you. 

[00:00:54] Darryn Chenault: So we're going to start with Ms. Kawanda. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

[00:01:00] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: Hello, I am Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas. I am a UC alumni. I'm over the DTS, Technical Operations, Public Safety IT. I have a long title. 

I've been with the university for 20, going on 23 years now. 

And yeah, I have under me, under my group of technical operations, I have the access control technicians, the intrusion alarms. 

Well, the access control technicians and the intrusion alarm folks are all the same people. So access control, intrusion alarms, and cameras. And then I also have Public Safety IT. 

[00:01:43] Darryn Chenault: So you do a lot? 

[00:01:45] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: Yeah, my people do a lot. 

[00:01:46] Darryn Chenault: Well, you said with that long title. She said she had a long title. So that long title comes with a lot of responsibility. Wow. So who do you have with you today? 

[00:01:55] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: I have Noah Rezene with me. He is my project coordinator. 

[00:02:00] Darryn Chenault: Tell us a little bit about yourself, Noah. 

[00:02:02] Noah Rezene: Yeah, so I've been with the university for about two years now. A little bit over two years in my position. And as a project coordinator, I work really closely with folks both in Public Safety and DTS to get projects done, typically camera related projects and access control related projects. 

[00:02:20] Darryn Chenault: You guys are taking care of us? 

[00:02:22] Noah Rezene: Oh, yeah, you sure are. 

[00:02:23] Kelly Cantwell: you sure are. 

[00:02:24] Kelly Cantwell: However, you guys both mentioned dts. So tell us what DTS stands for and what. How does DTS and Public Safety, how do they work together? 

[00:02:34] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: So DTS is Digital Technology Solutions and is the department that's the central IT for all of the university. 

Recently, I guess it was 2023, I believe it was, we centralized all the different IT groups that are from the different colleges and different departments and all into one department. So DTS is that one department. They have over 400 full time employees from getting all those different groups and centralizing all into one unit. 

[00:03:08] Darryn Chenault: So are they throughout the whole campus or is that just with public safety. 

[00:03:13] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: Throughout the whole campus? So say some of the colleges, they have their own IT folks, but those folks report to DTS, to management in DTS. 

So I used to report directly to Chief Isaac, but once they centralize, we're now under the information security group of Digital Technology Solutions. 

[00:03:36] Darryn Chenault: Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Noah, tell me this. I'm curious. How does DTS and public safety work together? 

I mean, how does that whole bond come together as it relates to cameras? 

[00:03:50] Noah Rezene: Well, as it relates to cameras, we work really closely with DTS, especially on the network side. So one important thing about placing a camera is that it has to be on  

UC's network. So making sure that we have available switches and that we can get network cabling to that location. So they really assist us with that portion. And then they also help us  

assign IP addresses to cameras and do things on the back end like that. 

[00:04:15] Darryn Chenault: Wow. Sounds like a great relationship. 

[00:04:18] Noah Rezene: Yeah, it's a great working relationship. 

[00:04:21] Darryn Chenault: That's way over my head. Kelly, when it comes to camera and technology it's like,  

[00:04:25] Kelly Cantwell: Yeah, technology is way over your head. 

[00:04:27] Darryn Chenault: It definitely is. Thank you for that. Yeah. Let everybody else. 

[00:04:32] Kelly Cantwell: I have to help you with your email a lot. 

[00:04:36] Darryn Chenault: You just let the whole world know that. And she does. And I'm proud of it. So that's what happens when you grow old. 

[00:04:46] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: I love it. 

[00:04:47] Kelly Cantwell: All right, so tell us. I feel like when we're. When I'm interacting with students, one of the things and parents, they want to know what goes into deciding where a camera is  

placed. 

[00:04:58] Noah Rezene: Oh so there are a few different factors that go into deciding exactly where a camera is placed. So we. Kawanda mentioned earlier, we work really closely as public safety it with

public safety.  So we'll look at recent crime trends and events that have occurred and try to get coverage in those locations. We also work really closely with the different units on  

campus, so different colleges to address their individual needs. So we have a work order system where people can go ahead and place a work order and we'll go out and assess the site to  

see exactly where cameras would be beneficial for them and where they can maximize their coverage. 

[00:05:37] Darryn Chenault: How long does that usually take? I'm just curious. 

[00:05:39] Noah Rezene: The process, it can really vary. There are a lot of different teams involved. So we're working closely with project services ourselves as DTS, outside vendors, and then the  

stakeholders themselves or the customer. So typically it can take anywhere between a month to two months. 

[00:05:59] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: And just to add on to what Noah was saying about the decisions on where we place cameras, one of the things that we've done recently is decide to  

put cameras on all the different entrances from the city streets. So we had a project going where anytime. So, like, onto Corry Boulevard or onto University Avenue, anywhere where people are 

coming from off the city streets, we have a camera somewhere nearby to kind of catch who's coming in and out of the campus. And then we also. Noah's working on a pretty big project  

where we're adding cameras to all the entrances of buildings. So then we can see who's coming in and out of buildings as well. 

[00:06:39] Darryn Chenault: Well, hold up every building. 

[00:06:43] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: That's what we're trying. 

[00:06:44] Noah Rezene: Every building. 

[00:06:45] Kelly Cantwell: How many buildings does the university have? 

[00:06:48] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: About a hundred and something. 

150? 160. 

[00:06:52] Darryn Chenault: That's a lot of cameras.

[00:06:53] Kelly Cantwell: Every entrance of every building is a lot of cameras. 

[00:06:55] Noah Rezene: It is. It'll be hundreds of cameras by the end of the project. 

[00:06:59] Kelly Cantwell: Your whole job,

[00:07:00] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: you probably wish it was, instead of having to deal with that and some other stuff. 

[00:07:07] Darryn Chenault: Wow, Noah. 

[00:07:09] Kelly Cantwell: So I want to circle back. You said one thing that I thought was really interesting. You talked about how you use crime data for determining camera locations. Can you dive a

little more into, like, how you work with UCPD and, you know, use that information? 

[00:07:28] Noah Rezene: Yeah. So we've actually did a large project where we mapped out all of our current cameras on campus, and with the help of UCPD's crime analyst, we were able to get a heat  

map of crime on campus and kind of overlay it on our site designer to see exactly where events were occurring, where we have cameras currently, and where we could use more coverage. 

[00:07:54] Darryn Chenault: That's nice. 

[00:07:56] Kelly Cantwell: That's awesome. 

[00:07:57] Darryn Chenault: I mean, how do you maintain these cameras? We're talking about a lot of. Or a lot of cameras on campus. I mean, help me out with the main. How do you maintain all 

 these cameras? Is it like a check? Do you guys. 

[00:08:10] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: So like we were saying before, I have a group of. We have a group of technicians. There are three of them, and a manager who basically watch the system. And  

 they do monthly reports of, you know, what cameras are online, what cameras are not, and then they just go and kind of repair if we need repairs. We also. We have a health check on our  

camera system so they can see different times where the cameras have gone, maybe offline and come back on.  We also do firmware updates so we can have the latest and greatest 

 software for the cameras. Okay. So, yeah, we have a group of technicians that keep an eye on that. And if somebody else notices and send a. They can send us a work order, an email to  

let us know that, hey, we noticed this camera was down just in case, for some reason we missed it because they mostly do checks monthly. 

[00:09:05] Darryn Chenault: Okay. 

[00:09:06] Kelly Cantwell: And yeah, so you talked about the software updates. What about just, you know, technology ages out after a while. So is there also. 

[00:09:15] Darryn Chenault: Are you talking about me? 

[00:09:15] Kelly Cantwell: Yes. 

[00:09:16] Darryn Chenault: You said age and I got offensive. 

[00:09:18] Kelly Cantwell: Yeah, I, I was saying that Darren ages out. 

[00:09:21] Darryn Chenault: Okay. I was just checking. 

[00:09:24] Kelly Cantwell: The cameras. You know, technology ages out. So is there like a schedule at which you have to replace cameras or does it just kind of depend on the camera? 

[00:09:32] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: So it kind of depends on the camera how well it's working. We do try to do. We're trying now to get more of a. Like a five to seven year rotation on replacing the  

cameras just for that reason. Technology changes all the time, so they add. They're adding newer things. AI is a big thing right now. So a lot of the cameras, the newer cameras have that AI  

capability.  So we're trying to get more on a rotation of changing five to seven years or so. 

[00:10:03] Kelly Cantwell: All right, so what does an AI capability in a camera mean? 

[00:10:06] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: Noah? Do you know that one? 

[00:10:09] Darryn Chenault: That means you don't have a job. 

[00:10:11] Kelly Cantwell: I have a job. I'm not monitoring cameras. 

[00:10:15] Noah Rezene: It's just advanced analytics on a camera. So there are certain features that you could turn on a camera, and we have these on our campus as well. So there's  

cameras that have vehicle counters. So you can count, like you'll draw an imaginary line, let's say, and if a car crosses that imaginary line, it'll start counting and keep an active tracker. 

There's also vehicle trackers. So if a car is driving on a road, like on our perimeter where we have a lot of traffic, it'll show kind of like the flow of that car and kind of follow that car. 

[00:10:48] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: It could give us details like, you know, how many times that car has been around our campus. Say we find, you know, there's a crime or something that happens and. Or that's maybe they're planning a crime.  

Then you can count, you know, get alerts if you notice that a particular car has been. Has driven around and been caught on different cameras multiple times, you know, just to kind of see if  

maybe they're planning something or. I mean, they could live in the neighborhood. 

[00:11:17] Darryn Chenault: Right. 

[00:11:17] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: But. Yep. Yeah. 

[00:11:18] Darryn Chenault: Tell me this. I'm sorry, I want to kind of go back. You were talking about putting cameras on off campus areas. How does that work? How do you guys coordinate that  

with the city of Cincinnati? Is that something that you guys get together? Is that 

[00:11:31] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: No, we don't do off campus areas. We just do camp. We have them on campus, but looking as camp. Cars or people come onto campus, so they're still on  

campus. They just. But we do have. We are about to do a partnership with the city where we can, you know, share kind of cameras. 

[00:11:51] Darryn Chenualt: I know that's a big thing. That's why I asked that. So just to clarify that the cameras are on UC property, but they're kind of looking off campus there. 

[00:11:58] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: Right. To see who's coming onto campus. 

[00:12:01] Darryn Chenault: Good deal. 

[00:12:02] Kelly Cantwell: So I think we've touched on this a little bit. But how do these cameras support, like, public safety and police operations? 

[00:12:10] Noah Rezene: Yeah, so it does this in a few different ways. So on the investigative side, it helps our investigators if an incident has occurred to look into that incident to pull footage. 

Also, it helps act as just a deterrent in general. If you have a camera placed, there's less likelihood of a crime to occur. So it helps out in that way. And then also in the events of  

emergencies or large events, we're able to pull up cameras live to do live monitoring also. 

[00:12:46] Darryn Chenault: That's great. Wow. I mean, you guys kind of touched on a lot today. I'm kind of impressed. 

[00:12:52] Kelly Cantwell: I'm always impressed. 

[00:12:54] Darryn Chenault: I mean, the teamwork over there seems like it definitely makes the dream work. 

[00:12:58] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: Try to make it work. 

[00:13:00] Darryn Chenault: You guys are doing a great job. Definitely doing a great job. Kelly, I'm kind of all out of questions because these are some professionals over here. 

[00:13:08] Kelly Cantwell: I mean, I've got a couple more. 

[00:13:12] Darryn Chenault: 2026 people. And she has more questions. 

[00:13:15] Kelly Cantwell: Well, you know, we talked about camera supporting public safety operations, but like a college or a unit can reach out to you all and request a camera on their building.  

And that's not necessarily, you know, for a police purpose. I mean, maybe it is for their security, but I feel like the cameras are for more than just policing. So how do you work with, like,  

colleges and units and what are their needs for cameras look like? 

[00:13:39] Noah Rezene: Yeah, it can really vary depending on the college or unit. So you'll have some colleges reaching out, especially ones that do a large amount of research that might need to  

monitor a lab. So they'll need it for a very specific use case. You'll have others that are just using for general security. So they just want to monitor maybe a high traffic hallway, who's  

coming in and out. So something that we focus on heavily also. So it really just depends. But they'll reach out to us through a work order system, and then we'll meet with that customer.  

We'll meet with them, project services, a few of our vendors, and then we'll conduct a site walkthrough to see exactly what their needs are. Because sometimes they might not exactly  

know. They just know that they need cameras, but they might not know the best location or what might be most advantageous for them. So that's where we kind of step in and

we'll provide recommendations for them. 

[00:14:33] Kelly Cantwell: So are you the person who gets to go out and walk in a building and look at the ceiling and be like, hey, that looks good.

[00:14:39] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: That's him. 

[00:14:40] Noah Rezene: Yep, that is me. And I find myself doing it in my everyday life now too. So if you ever see me in a Kroger, just looking up, that's what I'm doing. 

[00:14:47] Kelly Cantwell: Do you track your steps, because I think you should.  

[00:14:51] Noah Rezene: I don't, but I. I really should start tracking them. 

[00:14:54] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: And also to add, we have just recently this past year, added a security camera policy to the university where it gives kind of the guidelines of when people

have. When they're allowed to put in their own cameras in those cases, like the labs sometimes, or when they have to come through public safety. So anything dealing with safety, or

someone wants it for surveillance type purposes, it has to be on the public safety system. So this is a pretty new policy for the university.  But it is out there and we're trying to get more people

aware of it so we can make sure that we have some insight on all those safety issues and, you know, any kind of safety surveillance.

[00:15:41] Kelly Cantwell: And what are the advantages to that policy and streamlining it all through public safety? 

[00:15:46] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: Again, so our investigators can have that access, can be able to see if something happens. They have that footage right there with them, and we don't have to try  

to find a way for them to download the video if it's on a different system or things like that, and then just kind of have kind of a oneness on campus to have everything kind of one system and 

we aware of, you know, what's where and who has what? 

[00:16:11] Darryn Chenault: They're working very hard. 

[00:16:15] Kelly Cantwell: They sure are. 

[00:16:16] Darryn Chenault: I'm impressed. I keep saying it. I am impressed. Cameras are huge. Thank you, yeah. 

[00:16:23] Kelly Cantwell: Is there anything that you all think that, you know, any common questions you get or anything else you think that people might be interested to know about the cameras on  

campus? 

[00:16:34] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: We have a lot more than people probably realize. 

[00:16:40] Darryn Chenault: Definitely. 

[00:16:41] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: And we're continuing to grow every day. So just know that we do have a lot of cameras for our, for the community safety. It's not to watch people and, you know,  

be in people's business, Big Brother or anything like that. It's just for those safety reasons to make sure we are secure. And I'm sure it's a great level of, I don't know the word I want to say,  

assurance for parents to know that we have different, you know, we have cameras in elevators. Most people know that, especially in, in the dorms. So we, we can watch and, you know, 

have a way of just making sure we're all safe, students are safe. 

[00:17:21] Darryn Chenault: It's definitely a deterrent too, when it comes to crime. You know, a lot of people don't realize having cameras up, people are looking. I know the common thief is just looking  

around, like you said, kind of looking at the area. He sees that camera, he's going the other direction. So it's huge its definitely huge.  

[00:17:37] Noah Rezene: Most time yeah, like if a thief sees a camera, they're going to just go to an area with no camera right now and say that's an easier target. But that's where we step in and we 

cover that. 

[00:17:47] Darryn Chenault: Now I'm, I have a question. Is it okay if I ask a question, Kelly? Because I know, I know you had a lot of questions. 

[00:17:54] Kelly Cantwell: You can ask questions. 

[00:17:55] Darryn Chenault : I'm kind of one of those old school, I watch a lot of TV and, you know, the thief comes in, he steals something, looks at the camera. Can you guys pull like a facial recognition  

off of that camera? See, I'm that guy. I had to ask that question because I know a lot of kids still think that thing exists. So I'm just curious. 

[00:18:12] Noah Rezene: You can't necessarily have like a facial recognition where it pulls up somebody out of a magical database. But, but if it's a known person, they can search

against that. So like, if somebody has been in the system before or something like that, they can cross reference that picture. Another handy thing, we were talking about analytics

and cameras. Let's say I go ahead and commit a crime wearing this exact outfit, you know, blue shirt, gray vest. If using those analytics, you can actually search with those specific terms  

and find a person wearing that exact, you know, that exact clothing on different camera streams. So it also cuts down on investigative time, having to pour through hours of footage. 

Just using those analytics, you can do quick searches like that. 

[00:19:00] Kelly Cantwell: That's amazing. 

[00:19:02] Darryn Chenault: That is amazing. I'm glad I asked that question. I watched too much CSI. Does that show even come on anymore?  I watch a lot of those shows, and I'm like,  

does that really exist? So thank you for answering that question. 

[00:19:14] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: It does exist, but we don't necessarily have, you know, all those, especially the facial recognition. They do pride themselves, our security folks,   

and not invading people's privacy.  So we don't want to have a lot of things, you know, where you have that facial recognition and, you know, kind of being a little invasive. 

[00:19:33] Darryn Chenault: Wow. 

[00:19:34] Kelly Cantwell: Yeah. I imagine it's a balance between improving safety while also allowing people their privacy in public spaces. 

[00:19:41] Noah Rezene: Absolutely. 

[00:19:42] Darryn Chenault: Wow. 

[00:19:43] Kelly Cantwell: Some privacy in public spaces. Public spaces, I guess it's a limited amount of privacy. 

[00:19:49] Darryn Chenault: That's great. Well, I know it's about that time, and I definitely get to say it. You know what I'm about to say. 

[00:19:56] Kelly Cantwell: I do. 

[00:19:57] Darryn Chenault: Thank you. Thank you for coming out. 

[00:20:00] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: He's about to say something prolific. 

[00:20:03] Darryn Chenault: Thank you. That is simple. 

[00:20:06] Kawanda Dedrick-Thomas: Well, that's true. 

[00:20:08] Darryn Chenault: A lot of people don't even say thank you. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for being on Bridging the Gap, you know, definitely glad to see you guys are working hard  

for the campus and the. The faculty as well, you know. So thank you for all that good stuff. 

[00:20:21] Kelly Cantwell: Thank you to everyone listening. 

[00:20:23] Darryn Chenault: Yeah. 

[00:20:24] Kelly Cantwell: Because it's episode five now  

[00:20:25] Darryn Chenault: In 2026. 

[00:20:28] Kelly Cantwell: First episode. 2026, episode five of the podcast. 

[00:20:31] Darryn Chenault: And we definitely got to thank 1819 Innovation Hub for having us. So. 

[00:20:37] Kelly Cantwell: Absolutely. 

[00:20:38] Darryn Chenault: Thank you.

[00:20:38] Kelly Cantwell: All right, we will see you all next time. 

[00:20:42] Darryn Chenault:  We out.

---

[00:00:00] Darryn Chenault: Here we go. Back for another edition of Bridging the Gap. I'm here with my co host, 

[00:00:06] Kelly Cantwell: Kelly Cantwell 

[00:00:07] Darryn Chenault: and we're. Oh, we messed up. Here we go. Starting all over again.

[00:00:12] Kelly Cantwell: And today we have a. What word did you pick?

[00:00:16] Darryn Chenault: Beautiful day.

[00:00:17] Kelly Cantwell: Beautiful guest?

[00:00:18] Rob Gutierrez: Rainy day.

[00:00:19] Darryn Chenault: Oh, we have a wonderful guest today. A wonderful guest. We're here today with Lt. Gutierrez. How are you doing, Lieutenant?

[00:00:28] Rob Gutierrez: I'm doing fine. How are you doing?

[00:00:29] Darryn Chenault: I'm doing well. We're doing well. We wanted to talk a little bit about training.

[00:00:34] Kelly Cantwell: We wanted to let Lieutenant Gutierrez introduce himself.

[00:00:37] Darryn Chenault: See, here we go again. Here we go. Kelly knows that I like to just dive right into things. So, Lieutenant, tell us a little bit about yourself.

[00:00:46] Rob Gutierrez: So I'm Lieutenant Rob Gutierrez. I've been here at the university for almost 25 years.

Started off as a student worker, one of the best hires I've ever had here. I also did some training and hiring. One of the best hires was your own. Truly, Darren Chenault. 

[00:01:02] Darryn Chenault: Whoop. Whoop. 

[00:01:03] Rob Gutierrez: Yep. But. But no. So I've been in many different things. I've been over patrol, I've been over training, special events, internal invest...internal affairs, and currently I'm back in training and special events.

[00:01:17] Darryn Chenault: Wow. Sounds like you do a lot for the university.

[00:01:20] Rob Gutierrez: I've done a lot. It's treated me well.

[00:01:22] Darryn Chenault: That's awesome. Hey, just to talk a little bit about training, we were kind of curious what kind of training goes into training our officers. Like, do they get this whole continuing training every year? And what is it that we do?

[00:01:39] Rob Gutierrez: So that's a big question. So all of our officers, we do an abundance of training.

So the first thing that we have to do is required by the state of Ohio. So that includes all of our continued professional training. And each year, it varies from year to year, and it's typically around 24 hours. And that includes mandated training that deals with ethics, deals with use of force. It deals with any type of legal updates. It deals with Fourth Amendment training, with search and seizure. And then, so that's about eight hours, and then we go into 16 elective hours. So the state will give us 16 elective hours of what we can do.

And we can choose anything from, you know, driving, mental health bias, free policing training.

This year, one of the things that we did was alert training, which is we did two days, two full days of active threat training in order to make sure our officers are prepared to keep everybody safe.

[00:02:42] Darryn Chenault: That's big. That's big. So when you guys do this training, as far as the active shooter training, what goes into that is that, you know, are all the officers doing it at one time? Do you have people come in to help, like.

[00:02:58] Rob Gutierrez: So what we typically do is so all of our officers go through active threat training. So and, and we call it active threat, not active shooter training, because you never know, you never know what that threat could be. It could be various things. It could be, you know, a knife attack, it could be a firearm, it could be, it could be various things.

But all of our officers go through.

It's a two day course that they do. Sometimes we do one day.

It just depends upon timing.

However, this year we did two days. The first day it included, I believe it was five instructors.

And we try to limit the class to around eight to 10 people, eight to 10 officers at a time, because that gives the instructors the ability to really work with those officers one on one to make sure they're doing things effectively to be safe.

Moving through the hallways, different things, moving through efficiently to make sure everybody can stay safe. But they, like I said, two days. First day is gonna be the movement and training and whatnot. And then that second day we put everything together. That's when we're gonna have usually instructors. The same officers that attended the first day will go to the second day. And it's all scenario based training. So we put them, it's called sim round, simunition rounds. And so if an officer is getting shot at, they're getting shot at with a small paint round that, you know, it can leave a mark, it can hurt a little bit, and the officer certainly will learn their lesson. However, their goal is to go in and neutralize that threat, whatever that has been determined to be. So they're running to the threat, searching buildings, various different things. And while they're shooting, being shot on, or there could be any type of bomb, any type of explosive device, they're trying to neutralize that threat and, you know, make sure, make sure they know what they're doing. Because if something were to occur like that, we want to make sure that we can get there quickly and take care of what we need to do.

[00:04:55] Kelly Cantwell: And I think active threat is very concerning, especially at a university.

And so.

But when we think, you know, when you see an active threat or an active shooter in the news, it's kind of like you envision the suspect coming in and shooting a bunch of people with a rifle. But that's not the only type of scenario that you all train for that would be considered an active threat.

[00:05:18] Rob Gutierrez: Correct. Yeah, we train for anything. From a knife to explosive device, firearms, secondary devices. You know, a lot of times, if with active threats, if there is a firearm involved, a lot of times there are other types of, you know, whether a weapon or a device involved that we want to make sure that we train for.

So. But, you know, one of the awesome things about this training is that we're able to utilize our students as well.

So a lot of times we need, we need role players. You know, we want people running down the hallway. We want that chaos. We want our officers to encounter that chaos so they can actually, you know, run through it, make sure that they're identifying people correctly, make sure that they're, you know, if a student is saying they're a student, they're. They're doing that safely. We want that chaos there for our officers. So when they do encounter that or if they were to encounter that, it's not going to be the first time that they have something like that.

[00:06:12] Darryn Chenault: That's great. That's great. I've been in law enforcement for a while, and I hear this whole ICAT training.

Can you tell me what ICAT stands for and how do you guys go about doing that training?

[00:06:24] Rob Gutierrez: I can. So ICAT stands for Integrating Communication and Tactics.

And that was developed by PERF, which is a Police Executive Research Forum. PERF is one of the leading kind of think tanks for policing. And they put out a lot, put out a lot of, like, best practice of what we do. So ICAT right now is, is seen as kind of like a best practice. And what we do is when we train that, every single officer at our agency is trained in that, and we kind of say it's kind of spinning the wheel, okay? So, you know, we want our officers to go into a situation and have the most information that they can, whether they're responding to somebody who is, you know, completely coherent, whether they're responding to somebody that may be going through a mental health crisis, you know, the area, different things. We want them, while they're going there to gather all the information that they're able to. Okay, no matter what kind of scenario that it is, you know, and once they get there, we want them to, you know, know their. What are their legal rights, what are the policies, what do they need to do? Like, what is the knowledge base that our officers need to have in order to, you know, if, you know, act, one, within their legal scope, within the policy of the university, in order to remedy whatever it may be?

So when we look at that, that's the communication portion of it. And then there's also the tactics. So we're gathering, like I said, we're gathering all different types of information.

So when we gather that, when they're going into a situation, what are they doing? How are they going to act tactically in order to do that? Now, obviously we go into a situation and the reason I say it's kind of like a wheel where you can look at everything.

If you're going into a situation where you just maybe need to de-escalate somebody, that's one thing. However, if somebody has a firearm and they're actively doing something, you're going to spin that wheel and start at a different place.

So that's what we mean by that. However, the most important thing when it comes to the ICAT training is we teach our officers that the sanctity of life is the most important. So at the center of that wheel, that's the thing that we always take into consideration is the sanctity of life. Now it's not just for us, but it's also for the person who may be acting out. It's for the people that could be victims there during a scenario.

It's everybody. So not only is it us, but it's also a suspect or a victim. We want everybody to be safe.

Now this training, we do that, but we also do that in combination with other training. It kind of all fits together.

We also do something and it's kind of the hot topic in policing. And I can say being here for 25 years, this is something that's always been important to us. However, it's de-escalation and non-escalation training.

The ICAT, at least in what I've seen, we train both of those at the same day. We're actually coming up tomorrow, we're going to be training some people.

However, the ICAT training kind of tells people what to do to, whereas the de-escalation and non-escalation training kind of tells them how to do it. And so we use those together because we think that they really complement each other very well.

But the de-escalation training, the non-escalation training, we've been doing that for a long time because a lot of times, you know, it's difficult for some people just to go out and speak, right? And so we want to give our officers all the tools to, to be able to take a situation that may be chaotic to whereas if we're able to de-escalate that, you know, and keep somebody safe and talk somebody off a ledge, you know, have somebody drop the weapon. Depending upon how we respond, a lot of times it's going to be how they respond, and we want them to respond in a manner that's going to keep themselves safe.

[00:10:19] Darryn Chenault: That's a lot right there.

[00:10:21] Rob Gutierrez: It's deep.

[00:10:21] Darryn Chenault: It is deep.

[00:10:22] Rob Gutierrez: It's a lot.

[00:10:23] Darryn Chenault: Because I'm kind of curious. Half the time, you know, growing up and my encounters with law enforcement have been different. And when I say different, in a way, do all officers treat everybody the same, or is it just when you get to certain areas or certain groupings, do they treat them different?

[00:10:41] Rob Gutierrez: You know, in a perfect world, I would like to say that all officers treat everybody the same way. However, we're going to be honest about that, and that's not the case. Officers are people.

Officers make mistakes. You know, I would like to think that oftentimes officers are not trying to make those mistakes intentionally.

However, we know that's the case. Okay. I'm not blind to that. I don't think anybody's blind to that.

We're going to be real about it. You know, there's some officers out there that probably shouldn't be officers.

[00:11:11] Darryn Chenault: I think that's a great answer because honestly, until I got in law enforcement, I didn't know. And, you know, once, now that I'm in law enforcement, I can see that we are treating people equally.

[00:11:22] Rob Gutierrez: But you know what? I will, what I will say with that is, you know, with all that being said, I would say, at least in my encounters, the one that I've had, most officers, they're in this for the right reason. You know, you get that. You get that, you know, proverbial bad apple.

However, you know, most officers that I have encountered are doing it for the right reasons. They truly want to help people. I mean, it sounds kind of cliche. It's like I remember, you know, why do you want to get in law enforcement? That was a question I was asked. I'm sure you were as well.

And it's why I want to help people. And it sounds so cliche. However, it's true. I mean, it really is fitting. So while there are officers that shouldn't be officers, I would say the greatest majority of them are doing this for the right reasons, are going to be treating people, you know, without bias. You know, they're going to be treating them the same. They're going to be treating them in a manner that, you know, quite honestly, they want their family to be treated.

So.

[00:12:19] Kelly Cantwell: But I think we also have those unconscious biases that we have to address too. And I believe that There are ways that we train that try to...

[00:12:29] Rob Gutierrez: We do. 

[00:12:29] Kelly Cantwell: work on that. 

[00:12:30] Rob Gutierrez: We do. We work on that quite a bit. So, you know, people, people have biases no matter what. I have biases. You have biases. You do. Everybody does. If somebody is saying they don't have biases, don't believe them. I mean, everybody. Everybody has them.

[00:12:45] Darryn Chenault: That's right.

[00:12:45] Rob Gutierrez: So whether they're implicit biases or explicit biases, everybody has them. Explicit biases are going to be those bad biases. You know, they're the ones that, you know, Darryn, the one you're talking about growing up and everything. Those are going to be those explicit biases that you probably encountered. However, implicit biases.

You know, it's the unconscious in us. It's. It's when we're not thinking. Okay, so, you know, one of the examples that we use is, you know, you know, Kelly, let's say I'll use you, for example. Okay, so say you're walking down the road.

You're all by yourself.

You're at. It's nighttime, and you're walking down the road, and you see somebody walking down in your direction, opposite of you, walking down, right towards you. And they. They may not look like the nicest individual. They may look a little rough. They may look, you know,

[00:13:38] Darryn Chenault: Like me? He's just saying I look rough.

[00:13:39] Rob Gutierrez: Exactly.

[00:13:39] Darryn Chenault: Okay, I'll take that.

[00:13:40] Rob Gutierrez: No, no, no, no. I mean, there's all types of things that they could look at. Maybe they look like a biker that you don't feel comfortable with. Maybe it looks like a young kid that you're like, I think that person's gonna rob me, or something like that. Maybe it's a homeless person. It could be various people. However, they make you feel uncomfortable.

You see this and you don't really think about it. You just move to the other side of the road to walk down that road. Or maybe there's a elderly woman walking down the road and you're like, I feel good with that woman.

However, I don't feel good over here.

So that's kind of that implicit bias that we're looking at where it's like, you know, sometimes they keep us safe. However, the most important thing when it comes to implicit bias is, you know, are you aware of those biases? And we try to instill that in our officers. We do training, so we do some training from. It was developed by down at USF South Florida, Dr. Lorie Fridell. So it's fair and impartial policing.

So myself, along with a few other officers, we've been through some training to be instructors in that. And we started doing that back in, just after 2015, and we wanted to make sure that all of our officers were aware of their biases. You know, we don't want them to be influenced by their biases in a negative manner.

So all of our officers go through, whether they're, at the time, every single one went through, it was an eight hour or four hour course, I believe. And then now all of our officers, everybody that's hired on, we go through that and we do annual retraining to make sure that these ideas are fresh in their head. Whereas their biases are not going to be impacting their work or impacting any type of involvement that they have with the community in a negative manner.

[00:15:27] Darryn Chenault: So that was actually my next question. So this training that UCPD gets is every year?

[00:15:35] Rob Gutierrez: So we do, I would, I would say that we do some of the most training in the, in the state of Ohio.

We, we do an extensive amount of training. You know, anything from mental health training. All of our officers, there's a, there's a training called crisis intervention training, you know, and that has to deal with people that have a mental health crisis. You know, how do we, how do we work with those people? Making sure our officers are knowledgeable about different, like, you know, maybe somebody who's bipolar or depression or various different things, individuals that are suicidal.

We want our officers to go there and have this training to make sure that they are prepared to be able to, you know, ultimately help people.

[00:16:24] Kelly Cantwell: I think that's an important topic too, again, especially at college, to have those, you know, we do see students who are having some sort of mental health crisis and we are often the people who are responding initially to that. So how do you feel like that training has shaped our officers ability to respond to that?

[00:16:44] Rob Gutierrez: Oh, I think it's been fantastic, you know, all of our training. So I would say that. And I'll get into that in just a moment. However, one of the things that I've really, really enjoyed about university policing and I've been here forever, I feel like, however, one of the things that I've really enjoyed about it. You going to say something?

[00:17:01] Darryn Chenault: Forever. I just wanted everybody to know. Forever he's been here.

[00:17:05] Rob Gutierrez: I feel like it, but it's also done, it's done great things for me. This place has treated me very, very well. 

Darryn Cheanult: I agree. 

Rob Gutierrez: So. But where was I at?

[00:17:15] Darryn Chenault: I did catch him off guard with that forever.

[00:17:17] Rob Gutierrez: Forever. So.

Oh, one of the things that I've really enjoyed about working here at the university is that we have always been, and you know, some people don't really think about this in maybe other jurisdictions or municipalities, however, we are very much customer service oriented. Okay. So we have always, always been like that ever since I can remember. And you know, when we look at the, you know, we talked about the de-escalation and non-escalation training. You know, we talk about the, the, the ICAT training that we do. We talk about like the, like any training that we do.

A lot of it focuses on, you know, not necessarily 100% customer service, but it's like, how do you treat people well, you know, how do you keep them. And they keep their dignity even if they're going through the worst time in their life? How do we do that?

And so we try to instill in our officers, you know, how do you treat people? You know, because that matters. That matters. And it goes a long ways when you're dealing with an individual that may be going through a crisis, that may be having just a bad day. There's good, good people that just have bad days.

And we understand that. That's one of the things that we really understand here at the university, especially with our department.

Now, when it comes to her question, you're talking about mental health, how does that prepare us? It's training, you know, all that stuff, it prepares us. I mean, it's one of those things where we, we train for it, we do scenario-based training for it.

We instill all those values, all those like, ethics that we want them to have. And when they go out there and when they're dealing with somebody with a mental health crisis, I mean, oftentimes, I mean, we have, we have officers that have literally talked somebody off of a ledge.

Literally, like, literally off of a ledge. And that's one of those things where it's like, okay, all this training, now does that have to do with the officer too? And you know, sometimes people just have an ability, they have the gift of gab, they can do that.

However, we want all of our officers to be to the point where they can do that and it gives them that confidence to be able to go out there and, you know, speak with an individual that's going through a crisis.

[00:19:32] Darryn Chenault: Oh, 100%. I know that's key. And that's, that's, you know, you're absolutely right. I've been at a lot of agencies and I feel like the University of Cincinnati Police Department does an outstanding job of breaking down the training that we get to meet the needs of the community so I totally agree with you.

[00:19:50] Kelly Cantwell: Well, do you have any final thoughts or any final pieces of training that you really want to highlight?

[00:19:57] Rob Gutierrez: So when I look at training, we really do have the best interest of the university, whether it's faculty, staff, students, we really do have their best interest in mind.

There's all these hot topics. So some of the things that we've talked about.

The last thing I'll kind of go into is you got your hard tactics and you got your soft tactics. Okay, the hard tactics, you know, the alert training, the active threat training, different things like that. We always practice that. We've always practiced that. And we do that. We do that extremely well. I would say that some of our trainers are some of the best trainers that I've encountered and I'm extremely confident in them and training our officers. Then we have the soft skills, and that's the de-escalation and non-escalation training and all those things. So when we're looking at training, we're not just looking at it at a, hey, we like, there's always a threat or there's always this or always that. Okay. Sometimes it needs that softer touch. It needs that de-escalation. It needs that non-escalation.

We want our officers to be able to go in there. And, you know, I do talk about non-escalation. Like, well, what's that? That's an officer going in there and acting in a manner that they're not going to escalate that situation. Because sometimes just by wearing a badge, we can escalate that situation.

And if we can make, you know, if we encounter somebody and we, we can encounter one person at a time, we can make that difference. That's my goal.

That's. That is ultimately with my goal, with the training that we put out as a, as an agency to our officers, to have them make one. Make a difference with one person at a time. And it just kind of just goes from there.

[00:21:45] Darryn Chenault: That's wonderful.

[00:21:46] Kelly Cantwell: That's awesome.

[00:21:47] Darryn Chenault: Lieutenant Gutierrez

Rob Gutierrez: Darryn Chenault. 

Darryn Chenault: Thank you for being here.

[00:21:51] Rob Gutierrez: Thank you for having me.

[00:21:52] Darryn Chenault: I thought you did a excellent job at the overview of what University of Cincinnati Police Department is doing in training. So we glad that you came.

To be honest with you, I was sitting here, I wanted to tell people this guy is super famous right here because every time I watch a football game, he's running off with the head coach.

[00:22:11] Rob Gutierrez: Yeah, I do. I do. And you know why I do that?

[00:22:14] Darryn Chenault: Why is that?

[00:22:14] Rob Gutierrez: Why I do that.

So I've been very fortunate. So for the last seven years, I've been fortunate to be able to travel with the UC football team. And it's one of the, my honestly, one of my favorite things, the most blessed things I get, I get to be able to do.

And you know, you talk about fair and impartial policing, you talk about bias free policing, okay. And it's like, do officers sometimes have a bias? They do. However, sometimes people do as well. Okay. And when I go out there, okay, I'm encountering not just the coaching staff, I'm encountering the entire team, okay. And you know, sometimes I talk to more than others and whatnot. However, I want to be that positive influence with those players.

And when you talk about bias free, you know, I want them to be able to see an officer out there that they can trust. And like I said, one person at a time, you know, maybe I'm that one person that I can influence one of those players. And so, I mean, I absolutely love doing that. I mean, honestly, I get to see a lot of places and I've been been to a lot of places. And so, you know, partially that's, that's my own, like, benefit and I love doing it.

However, the positives far outweigh, like anything that I could ever ask for.

[00:23:30] Darryn Chenault: Well, before we go, I just want to get an autograph because I know you're a famous guy out there. So if you can.

[00:23:36] Rob Gutierrez: Do you want me, you want me to make it out to you?

[00:23:38] Darryn Chenault: Yeah. Because I'mma frame that and put that in my office.

[00:23:40] Rob Gutierrez: I got you. I got you.

[00:23:41] Darryn Chenault: And I'm going to make sure that Kelly. Make sure Kelly gets one too.

[00:23:44] Rob Gutierrez: To Kelly.

[00:23:45] Darryn Chenault: Yeah, to Kelly.

[00:23:45] Rob Gutierrez: Is that with an ey or just a y?

[00:23:47] Kelly Cantwell: You know. 

Rob Gutierrez: I know.

[00:23:49] Darryn Chenault: See, that's how we wrap it up here on Bridging the Gap. I want to thank 1819 Innovation Hub for hosting us.

[00:23:57] Kelly Cantwell: Yes. And thank you for listening to our fourth episode.

[00:24:00] Darryn Chenault: Oh, we moving along. Fourth episode.

[00:24:04] Kelly Cantwell: And to all of our students, faculty and staff, have a great holiday season.

[00:24:08] Darryn Chenault: Happy holidays.

[00:24:09] Rob Gutierrez: Happy holidays.

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[00:00:00] Darryn Chenault: We're back with another episode of Bridging the Gap. I'm your guy, Officer Darryn Chenault, here

[00:00:07] Kelly Cantwell: With Public Information Officer Kelly Cantwell.

[00:00:10] Darryn Chenault: Yes, I am here with two rock stars from UCPD, Lt. McMahon and Ms. Rachel Kleindorfer. Did I say that right?

Kelly Cantwell: No, not at all. Darryn Chenault: You smiling.

[00:00:23] Rachel Kleindorfer: It's Kleindorfer.

[00:00:24] Darryn Chenault: Yes, there it is.

[00:00:25] Rachel Kleindorfer: Yes.

[00:00:26] Darryn Chenault: So we're gonna get right into it. We were talking the other day, and we were talking about, like, current trends around the University of Cincinnati.

[00:00:34] Kelly Cantwell: Hey, Darryn.

[00:00:35] Darryn Chenault: Yes?

[00:00:36] Kelly Cantwell: Maybe we should let them introduce themselves.

[00:00:38] Darryn Chenault: Oh, there it is. See, I like to get into things.

[00:00:42] Jennifer McMahon: Darryn's on a roll.

[00:00:43] Darryn Chenault: I am on a roll. Lieutenant McMahon.

[00:00:47] Jennifer McMahon: Hi, everybody. I'm Lieutenant McMahon, and as you guys know, I run the investigations unit here at the university.

[00:00:55] Rachel Kleindorfer: Yeah, my name is Rachel Kleindorfer, and I am the crime analyst and technical lead at the University of Cincinnati. So I study a lot of data trends that happen on and around campus and help us work, you know, smarter and not harder.

[00:01:08] Darryn Chenault: You make things go for us, huh?

[00:01:09] Rachel Kleindorfer: I try.

Jennifer McMahon: Makes my job easier.

[00:01:12] Darryn Chenault: That's all good. Well, we're going to jump right into it. We were kind of talking the other day, and we were talking about burglary trends throughout the University of Cincinnati. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:01:23] Rachel Kleindorfer: Yeah, absolutely. So the area that I'm gonna be discussing today is from an area called the CSR, which stands for Concentration of Student Residents. So that's essentially where our students are living on and around campus, because it's important to understand the crime that our students are going to be facing coming on and off of campus. So primarily, most of the burglaries that do occur are off campus.

Specifically, an area that we struggled with over the summer months were on the south side of campus.

It only takes one or two individuals to really drive up our numbers, unfortunately. So our year to date numbers are higher at this point. I want to say they are, they are increasing. For our year to date numbers, however, for the 28 day, the past 28 days, and the past seven days, we are decreasing, which is great. We just had a really rough summer, and hopefully we can continue that decreasing trend. But we're going to get into some things about how to prevent burglaries that should hopefully help these numbers moving forward.

[00:02:25] Jennifer McMahon: Well, and one of the incidences that I think drove the numbers was we had the burglary on campus, and that was quite a few people that were arrested on that one. So that made our numbers higher. But it was one incident. But a bunch of people

Rachel Kleindorfer: Right, Absolutely.

[00:02:40] Darryn Chenault: Does this have anything to do with juveniles? I mean, how much of this is juveniles versus adults? Just curious.

[00:02:46] Rachel Kleindorfer: So it depends on the instance. Most of the ones that I'm seeing off campus and on the south side are not juveniles. But I do know there was the instance that Lt. McMahon was discussing was involving juveniles, I believe.

[00:03:00] Jennifer McMahon: Yes. That that was mostly all juveniles.

Rachel Kleindorfer: Yeah. Mostly all juveniles.

[00:03:03] Jennifer McMahon: Yes. Yeah.

[00:03:04] Kelly Cantwell: And can you talk a little bit about on campus burglary and off campus burglary? Because we look at both in what you do.

[00:03:11] Rachel Kleindorfer: Yeah, absolutely. So on campus definitely looks different. So we were, you know, kind of discussing a little bit before this. There are some instances where there are burglaries that happen on, like within some of our our buildings.

So there are some that happen in the dorms, for example, people. People going into each other's rooms when they're not invited and taking things.

But the instances off campus are usually the offenders are not UC affiliated. So in the case with the dorm situation, that can sometimes be roommate, you know, roommate trouble.

But sometimes the ones off campus are not involving UC affiliated people. The offenders aren't anyway, so they're entering through, like, unlocked doors, windows, things of that nature. Do you want to talk more about the on campus ones?

[00:04:02] Jennifer McMahon: Yes. And I also think that's important to note is while the numbers. Rachel looks at the numbers in the whole CSR area, how they're reported to police are different. So if it's. And that's where jurisdiction gets confusing and complicated for people that don't understand it. If you live on campus or you are a victim of a burglary or a crime on campus, then it would be reported to UCPD. But if you live off campus, it's reported to CPD, and we still get those reports and those numbers. But I think it's important to note when she talks about crime stats and stuff, it's, you're encompassing a big area. Not just necessarily for all intents and purposes, UC community, so to speak.

[00:04:51] Kelly Cantwell: And I imagine with what Rachel does, it's very important that we look at Cincinnati police reports too.

[00:04:57] Rachel Kleindorfer: Absolutely.

[00:04:58] Kelly Cantwell: Because my understanding is a lot of our students live in these areas off campus. So it's very valuable for our purposes to be looking.

[00:05:05] Jennifer McMahon: Oh, yeah, the majority. I mean, I won't speak to actual numbers, but 3/4 of the students live off campus. We're dealing with a small number actually on campus.

[00:05:15] Darryn Chenault: Speaking of students, Lieutenant McMahon, what can our students do to prevent, you know, such actions as far as break ins, you know, just kind of prevent things from happening?

[00:05:25] Jennifer McMahon: Right.

[00:05:26] Jennifer McMahon: Well, I think it's first and foremost the biggest things, and I know it sounds redundant, silly. I'm sure everybody's told the same thing, but I think it's easily overlooked when you're excited to get back home, get out of town, get on vacation. But locking doors and windows. I get a lot of the students live in, like, older houses, so they keep the windows open for airflow and things like that. But you've got to remember, even a crack, even someone is looking for that. Like, even a cracked window, they can push in.

Doors and windows, make sure they're locked. Make sure. Rachel and our talking, she brought up blinds. Blinds being closed.

Lights are important.

Students know they live off campus. The lighting is not the best.

And, you know, community engagement, I know that's a battle they fight continuously with the city to try and get better lighting. But if you can get your landlords to put up, like, floodlights, leave a light on in the front window so it looks like someone's home. Even something simple as leaving a TV on so the noise, so people think someone's home, you know. And the biggest thing and I know social media and everybody. And I, you know, I'm showing my age here.

Social media is a big deal. I get it. Everybody wants to post their photos in real time where they're at if you're on vacation or you're back home. But believe it or not, people look for that stuff and they see that and they know people are out of town. So if you can wait to post your vacations or your trips or things like that till you get back, that's a, that's a big deal.

[00:07:04] Kelly Cantwell: And as we go into a lot of breaks for the university, like Thanksgiving and the winter break, are there, like, specific things that you see common mistakes students are making when they're leaving for, you know, more than a weekend?

[00:07:21] Jennifer McMahon: Yeah. I mean, a lot of the things we just talked about, other things are like leaving the trash cans out. Cause the trash came, you know, Thursday and they left Thursday. So trash can sit out till Monday or something. A lot of times it could be laziness or whatever. But it also lets people know that, hey, someone might not be home. Because, let's face it, everybody knows the majority of where the students live. The bad guys know that, too.

This isn't their first rodeo. So they know when spring breaks are, fall breaks, winter breaks, summer breaks. So these are the things when they're looking for houses that are easy targets, they're looking for those things. So I would just, you know, again, lock doors, locked windows, closed blinds, keep lights on if you can.

[00:08:11] Kelly Cantwell: And I think I heard Rachel mention something the other day about someone pushing in an AC unit.

[00:08:16] Jennifer McMahon: Yeah, that's been.

[00:08:17] Rachel Kleindorfer: Yeah, that can also definitely happen.

I know that's a little bit harder to prevent because a lot of our students are renters, and so that's the situation with the landlord.

But if you're able to, I know it's kind of hard, but put the AC unit on the second level, for example, that would be something that would be preferable to a first floor because it's easier for offenders to gain entry.

[00:08:41] Kelly Cantwell: Well, and I think by Thanksgiving you can possibly even be removing these from your windows altogether. And just shutting them.

[00:08:47] Rachel Kleindorfer: Yes, definitely. When it gets colder, just removing them would probably be the best bet. And then of course, locking the window afterwards to prevent any kind of break ins through the windows.

[00:08:59] Kelly Cantwell: And I think we get questions sometimes from students about having like a security system like ring or SimpliSafe or, I don't know, any of the other ones. Do you see much benefit to those? Should students be trying to invest in that?

[00:09:13] Jennifer McMahon: Oh, yeah. I mean, people's ring doorbell cameras have helped us significantly catch,

Rachel Kleindorfer: Absolutely.

Jennifer McMahon: catch perpetrators and yeah, other bad guys. Yeah, I mean, they'll offer up. And we had one that was one person that was hitting off campus pretty hard and the girls didn't even know they were helping. And they called up and they said, hey, we have a ring doorbell camera. We think of this guy, he kind of looked suspicious and it was him. And yeah, we were able to identify him.

[00:09:42] Darryn Chenault: I get a lot of questions. The ring camera, is that pretty much the landlord's, is that his decision to put the ring camera on or can kids put it on themselves?

[00:09:53] Jennifer McMahon: I think it's, hey, if I could do it, probably anybody could do it. I put one up in my house.

It's very simple. But however, I would just mention it to your landlord that you're doing it. I wouldn't just go rogue and start putting up things.

Definitely mention it. I can't see a landlord saying no.

I mean, I would first ask them to install it and if they say no, say, well, are you okay with me doing it? And then go get a $50 doorbell camera.

[00:10:21] Kelly Cantwell: And some of these sensors can be pretty renter friendly, right? Like they just stick on the window as opposed to having to screw things in.

[00:10:27] Jennifer McMahon: Oh, yeah.

[00:10:28] Rachel Kleindorfer: There's a lot of different options. And actually the ring camera is really helpful for analytics as well. Because one of the issues that I face, for example, over the breaks, like Thanksgiving or winter break, is that I won't know what crime has occurred until the student has come back and reported it.

So a lot of the times I'm not aware over long periods of breaks where our students aren't present when a burglary actually happens.

So with the ring, you get your time and day in that moment, because a lot of times, even with burglaries without breaks, most students won't report it until, for example, the next morning or when they get home. And so I don't have a super accurate day or timeline of when they're coming. And that timeline is really important because that helps narrow down what times I'm going to be looking at recommending to our patrol of when we need to be doing our directed patrols and where.

[00:11:19] Darryn Chenault: So what happens? I come home, I'm a student, and I realize my door's kicked in or my window's smashed out. What do I do next?

[00:11:27] Jennifer McMahon: Call us, Call the police, like I said. And this is where that jurisdiction comes into play.

The majority live off campus. So if you're burglarized off campus, we. When you call 911, a Cincinnati Police officer is going to show up. They're going to take that report. Now, UCPD and CPD work very well together for the most part. So a lot of times the CPD officers find out it's a UC student, they call us, we send an officer to take an information report.

So we have all the details as well.

And we also have our victim service coordinator, which steps in and helps on the victim side, can help navigate things like that.

But the city handles the offense.

So then they'll start though it'll go to an investigator and they'll start their process.

[00:12:16] Darryn Chenault: So when I come home and I realize my house has been broken into, should I wait outside? Should I go in to see what's missing? Can you kind of guide me on that?

[00:12:25] Jennifer McMahon: You know, I think all situations are going to be different. If it's nighttime and you're getting back and you're alone and your door is open or your window has been broken, absolutely. Do not go in that house. Call from your car, call from the street. If you know your neighbors are home, a friend's home, go over there, make the phone call, wait for the police to clear your house.

I think it's going to be situational. If it's the daytime and then you've been gone for a week and it looks like the back window has been broken out of, I would tell you, err on the side of caution, do not go in. Call outside, have the, have the officers go in and clear your house. Why would you take that chance? And then when they tell you the house is clear, you're going to come in and they're going to say, okay, what's missing? What's messed up, what, things like that. There's no sense of urgency for you to go in if you do not feel comfortable.

[00:13:24] Kelly Cantwell: And what if I am in my home and an offender comes in? What's, what do I do in that situation?

Darryn Chenault: Besides scream? I have to ask. I’d scream.

[00:13:35] Jennifer McMahon: Yeah, I mean, make as much noise as you can. Run. Lock yourself in a closet, lock yourself in a bathroom, lock yourself in another room, get out if you can. A lot of these older houses have like back doors, front doors, a door on the second floor. Run down. I mean, get out any way you can.

Call us immediately. Make as much noise as possible. We've had that happen. We've had some reports where. But again, these people are, these bad guys are wanting to get in and get out as quick as possible. We've had people knock in window units grab what they can that they can reach and run away. I mean, they're not, you know, and a lot of times people are woken up with people in their house and they've startled the bad guy just as much as they're not expecting someone to be home. It's just luck of the draw type thing. So yeah.

[00:14:23] Rachel Kleindorfer: And I think it's important to also discuss, like, who you're living with in terms of. Because sometimes there have been reports where they think it's their roommate, for example, so maybe just having some discussions with who you're living with, you know, if they're going to be home late or, you know, sort of having some expectations of when, when they're going to be home. So if something is out of the ordinary, they would know, hey, that's actually not my roommate. You know, that's, you know, and also just being aware, you know, don't leave a key under the mat or, you know, for other people to come in your house. You know, just general things like that.

[00:14:53] Jennifer McMahon: Yeah, I mean, and that brings up a good point for. On campus, for the residence halls, we hear that a lot that students will be like, well, I don't want to live like I'm in, you know, a jail cell that's locked. So we'll leave our doors open so our friends can just come in and out, you know, keep it. And I understand that, but you're also opening yourself up for situations like this. So when you are in your homes or your residence hall, keep your doors locked. I mean, unfortunately, it's kind of the day and age we live in now, and it shouldn't be that way, but it is that way.

[00:15:28] Kelly Cantwell: Can you also talk, I've heard people around the office mention before where offenders will meet a student at a bar or something and they will strike up a casual conversation. In the midst of that conversation, they will find out details about where the student lives and when they're going to be back. Can you talk a little bit about that and like protecting your privacy with people that you meet?

[00:15:48] Jennifer McMahon: Yeah. I think the biggest thing is when you're at a bar and if you're drinking and of course you're getting a little more loose lip, things like that. Again, bad guys are looking for those situations and they'll ask you questions that you don't even realize how they're wording it to get information out of you. Or they'll offer to walk you back to your house or things like, now they know where you live, or they'll watch you get your key from under the mat or under your wheel well because you left them there so you don't have to bring your keys in. And again, they're looking for all of that. So, I mean, the biggest piece of advice is do, do not. If you don't know someone, they don't need to know that about you. You know, you don't know this person. They have no business knowing where you live, where you're going. We share way too much information.

[00:16:33] Rachel Kleindorfer: Yeah, well, and you had mentioned that earlier about being wary of what you're sharing on social media.

Jennifer McMahon: Yes.

Rachel Kleindorfer: You know, making sure that you're not posting when you know you're actively like out of town, showing that you're out of town for a long period of time, just kind of protecting yourself. Post the photos after you get back. I think that's one of the best things you can do to protect yourself.

[00:16:54] Jennifer McMahon: Especially if your accounts are public. Snapchats are public. I mean, anybody can see these.

[00:16:59] Rachel Kleindorfer: Yeah. Making your accounts private is also pretty useful in that regard as well.

[00:17:04] Kelly Cantwell: So on that same note of prevention, what does UCPD do to prevent burglaries?

[00:17:11] Rachel Kleindorfer: So something I'll do as the analyst is I'll be looking at different crime trends. So I've talked a lot about some of the crime trends that have happened over the summer, for example, and that's kind of when we were beginning to discover, to discover common methods of entry.

It's trying to identify if this person is, you know, working alone, for example, or has, like, a small group, how are they evading, you know, police, for example, are there specific areas and specific times that they're targeting? You know, looking at all of that stuff is really important. And once I determine, and that's where those ring cameras can really come into handy, because sometimes I don't get the report until the next morning. So it's, I have a window to work with at best, sometimes. So. But if I can find common areas of locations or common paths of travel for these offenders, then I can give that information to our patrol supervisors.

If there is any ring camera footage. That's something, of course, we would give to our investigators, and they can look more closely into that. But I will be base my recommendations off of the data and what I am given, and then I will give those recommendations to our patrol supervisors so they can go out and do directed patrols, have communications with our students, that kind of thing.

[00:18:21] Jennifer McMahon: Yeah, we take that information that poor Rachel has to compile for all of us, and then we have a community engagement team that will go out and say, if it's more of, like, an educational piece, we start seeing trends or maybe some communication out with the students in the neighborhood, things like that. More of like, hey, if you see something, say something. Things like that, we'll have community engagement. Go out and do that. Or if it comes down to our cuff detail, which I don't know if a lot of people know we have a cuff detail, that it's Clifton, Fairfield, Fairview. Forget what it all stands for. It's the four. It's the four areas that we patrol. I'm sorry, I should know that. But they're actually CPD officers that come in. And it's a timeframe. Sometimes it changes based on activity levels and when places are getting hit more, but most of the time it's in the evening hours, over, like in the second and third shift. And those units are just responsible for taking the data that Rachel's compiled and say, okay, so say these streets are, we're seeing a lot of uptick in crime on those streets. They will do directed patrols and watch those streets.

[00:19:41] Darryn Chenault: So that's kind of awesome that UCPD and Cincinnati PD works together.

[00:19:46] Jennifer McMahon: Yes.

[00:19:46] Darryn Chenault: Based off of some of the information that you provide. Correct?

[00:19:49] Rachel Kleindorfer: They're, they're very wonderful to work with. When we were having all of these upticks and burglaries, we were having a lot of conversations with District 1, which is on the south side of campus. That's where we historically have seen a lot of our burglaries before. Not just this past summer, but we had a burglary project there at one point and saw a drastic decrease. But burglaries definitely do still happen in the area. But, yeah, we have monthly meetings with CPD.

[00:20:13] Jennifer McMahon: I was just gonna say make sure you mention that we have monthly or we have quarterly crime reduction meetings and our monthly crime reduction meetings are very important. And Cincinnati shows up. Everybody takes it very serious. Rachel does a whole presentation on what basically she's talking about with pictures and graphs and.

[00:20:34] Rachel Kleindorfer: Right.

[00:20:36] Darryn Chenault: That's awesome. I, once again, I appreciate you guys for coming on today and providing us with all this knowledge, just dropping that big old knowledge on us. So the students, the community, we would love, love, just love that information, just getting it out there. So once again, on behalf of the wonderful Kelly Cantwell over here and Lieutenant McMahon, Rachel Kleindorfer, I got it right that time. Thank you for coming out. Have a great day. All that good stuff.

[00:21:07] Kelly Cantwell: Yep. Thank you for joining us. This is the third episode of Bridging the Gap.

[00:21:11] Darryn Chenault: Bye.

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[00:00:00] Darryn Chenault: Hello. And we're back to bridging the gap.

[00:00:04] Kelly Cantwell: We are so glad you decided to join us for part two of our conversation with Heather Tinney, addressing common safety questions from parents of our UC students.

[00:00:26] Heather Tinney: I have all these new parents.

What can we as parents be doing? Or let me say it this way. What's the things you see students doing that they probably get themselves into trouble doing? What are the things we can warn them about ahead of time?

[00:00:38] Carra Sparks: Great question.

[00:00:39] Darryn Chenault: That is a great question. Because the turnover is big every year. Obviously we get incoming students every year, so. Wow. I guess the number one thing is kind of get educated. Officer Sparks?

[00:00:50] Carra Sparks: Make smart decisions.

You know, we're not stupid. We know that part of the college experience for many kids is drinking and maybe experiencing other things.

Just be smart about it. And also, we are here to help you if something is going wrong. Maybe you had a bunch of kids to a, bunch of students to your residence hall room, and now there's 30 kids packed in a residence hall room with a bunch of alcohol. And this is not what you want it to happen. It just kind of got out of control.

Call us on yourself.

Make it look like you're not the bad person having a huge party in your dorm room.

We also have the amnesty policy. So if you come to your residence hall room and maybe your roommate is incapacitated, call us. We'll get them the help that they need. We'll get them to the hospital, we'll do an information report, and they'll get sent the student code of conduct.

We don't want someone to be afraid to call police and have a student not survive because they drank too much or took some drugs or, you know, whatever the situation may be, we are truly here to help you.

We want all of our students to learn, earn, and return.

So learn while you're here.

[00:02:07] David Brinker: Did you coin that yourself?

[00:02:08] Carra Sparks: No, that was a Jim Vestring quote.

[00:02:10] David Brinker: I like it.

[00:02:10] Carra Sparks: A retired police officer and he had one son that went here who's an engineer, but yeah, so learn while you're here. Earn once you graduate, make lots of money and then return money to the university. Get a building named after yourself.

[00:02:23] Darryn Chenault: I like that one.

[00:02:24] Carra Sparks: But yeah, we truly care about your safety.

And, you know, mental health is also a huge thing that we deal with. And we pride ourselves on our mental health response to our students that are having mental health crisis. So please do not hesitate to call UC police.

[00:02:41] Greg Valerius: I would say general awareness. I mean, I don't think it's even a generational thing. I think it's just society now. If you have downtime, you're pulling up that phone. When you're standing on the sidewalk, are you paying attention to what's going around you or are you checking what's new on your social media app? I think we all do that. So I think really pushing that awareness, like, hey, maybe look up, see what's going on around you. You know, more than just traffic. But, you know, be more aware. Don't just have your face in your phone when you're walking around in a strange area or if you're not with someone else, like, especially if you're by yourself, be more aware of what's going on around you. Everyone seems to have AirPods or headphones in, so they're not even hearing anything anymore. So take one AirPod out or just, you know, put it on mute while you're crossing the street. I think just the simpler steps for safety are the most effective. And I think just general awareness and general, just be on the lookout and trusting your gut, I think is some of the best things you can do to stay safe while you're here.

[00:03:35] David Brinker: Greg made some good resources. I used the term earlier on resources, community. We want to be resourceful to our community members.

And really the biggest thing, if you're a new student on campus or just living off campus, be mindful of who you are and your own strengths and weaknesses. So obviously, if I have my. I have a daughter, she'll be here next year. So as a daughter, there's going to be different concerns for her safety versus my son when he comes to UC, right? So as a daughter, you know, hey, if you go out to a party, I want you to be mindful of, hopefully you're not drinking and doing stuff like that, but if you are, I want you to be smart about it. You know, have a buddy system and be aware.

International students, we have a big international student population and look at the times, what's going on now. Our country is changing. We have a new presidency, new people coming in, and we've already seen it blowing up where, you know, international students are being targeted. Hey, they're going to send a message. Hey, unless you pay us this $10,000, you're going to be deported, that type of thing. So we want those international students to reach out to us. Hey, I got this message. Whether it's email, text, voicemail, come to UC if you see Officer Valerius on the street. Hey, can you help me out here? I'm really scared. I got this. I'm afraid I'm going to be deported and we can help vet that for you. So the key is, you know, depending on who you are as a student, where you're from, what your background is, we all have different strengths and weaknesses that we really need to be aware of and try to overcome.

[00:04:56] Darryn Chenault: What are some of the other concerns out there with the parents?

[00:05:01] Heather Tinney: This is a silly one, but why do the alerts and the clearances come from two different phone numbers?

Because not everybody gets the alert and the clearance. They might get one, but not the other.

[00:05:13] Kelly Cantwell: That is all to do with the company that we use. And we have no ability to make it come from just one phone number.

That was just one of those, like, technology things that you just can't fix.

And I think the other thing with technology is that it's not foolproof. So even me as the person who is sending some of these alerts, you know, I'm the one who hits that button sometimes. I don't always receive every single text to my phone.

That's one of the other things that. I mean, you get them via email, too. But then the students and faculty and staff who have that Guardian app also receive it on the Guardian app. And I get it faster on the Guardian app than it comes in any other method.

So.

[00:06:01] Heather Tinney: I know a lot of parents are concerned about the fights that happen after school lets out.

I think the being aware is probably a big part of it. I talk to my kids about that. Take the headphones off, be looking around you. They've had the benefit of traveling around the world, right? They've been overseas, so they've had that benefit, but a lot of students haven't. So what are some things that students can do to maybe be more aware in that situation or even to get themselves out of a bad situation when they're in it?

[00:06:30] Darryn Chenault: Now you talk about fights after school. Are you talking about the high school?

[00:06:33] Heather Tinney: Sometimes the high school. I'm also thinking of fights that happen as bars let out. Like, you know, nothing good happens at 2 a.m. as the bars let out. Right. So there are situations that they might find themselves in the middle of. How can they use the Guardian app or maybe extract themselves from these?

Anything they can do?

[00:06:53] Greg Valerius: I mean, get creative. I mean, all of a sudden, Mom's calling me, sorry, I gotta step out. I gotta get away from this. If you're in, like, an awkward situation, you get out.

I don't think there's a parent out there that if they texted you and say, hey, can you give me a call real quick? They're not just gonna call them right away, right?

You can call our department and, you know, and pretend like you're talking to someone else if you want to.

But really, most of the fights that we see on Calhoun street, and it's a growing issue, and our office is well aware of it and working on ways to, you know, combat that issue, is really. It's not so much random acts from what we've seen. It's more so these groups, every issue they have going in school, they decide to take it out on Calhoun street after the fact. So obviously, we don't want that to interfere with other people. We don't want it to happen in the first place.

But most of the time, from what I've seen, it's happening out there, and it's not really just grabbing random people and affecting them. So, like, if you see a group starting to congregate, you see a group starting to yell or have words, you know, get out of there.

A lot of times it's quick and over, and then, you know, we're right there to try and take care of it. But the fights haven't been as random acts, I would say.

[00:08:08] Darryn Chenault: And I think going back to what one of you guys said before, listen to your, pay attention to your gut. You know, a lot of our kids want to run to the fight to see what's going on and record it. Yeah, that's the worst thing you can do.

Go in the opposite direction. I tell my girls all the time, cross the street, go a different way. Maybe longer, but go a different way so you get home safe. And as far as being out late at night, I always use the excuse to get out of there before the actual bar closes. You know, you want to get out of there early.

I tell them to act like you're taking a phone call and you got to take it outside and keep on going. You know, that's the best way to kind of break yourself away from the situation, so to speak. I definitely understand where you're coming from. That's a big concern of mine, too.

[00:08:54] David Brinker: So the key, I think the key here is non escalation. De escalation is really the key. Remove yourself from the area if you have to create some type of distraction, but really don't want to escalate anything. You know, we don't want to get in confrontation. Unfortunately, when you're young, sometimes, maybe especially if you're a guy, you might want to challenge him a little bit, you know, that type of thing. And maybe your ego will get in the way, but we really encourage you not to do that. And really, non escalation, de escalation is really the key because as Greg mentioned, it's, you know, or Carra, you know, people like to get out their cell phones and record things. Next thing you know you got a big circle forming and, you know, just bad things can happen.

[00:09:30] Kelly Cantwell: So, and I think as a follow up to that too, people have a tendency to record things and they also have a tendency to not call 911.

You assume someone else is doing it or you're too busy trying to take a video, you're not going to call the police.

Don't assume someone else has called the police.

[00:09:46] David Brinker: Yeah, that's a great point. You know, and sometimes like on Calhoun Street, when we're dealing with some of the local kids in the area, some of the juveniles, sometimes it can be kind of hard to decipher what's going on because when these high school kids get out, you know, they're full of energy, they're kind of running around and sometimes it looks like maybe to you and I or someone in the area that they're fighting, really they're just playing around, you know what I mean? So it's all, it's kind of that. Is this really a fight going on here or are they just goofing around? So that causes, you know, some little bit anxiety as well. But you gotta, you know, kind of assess the area, try, try to analyze, you know, who's involved here. You know, if it's a high school kid, it may be just, you know, they're still a little bit immature, right? They just got that pent up energy because they got out of the school and they're kind of running around acting a little crazy. In reality, they're not there to harm anybody. They're just, it's just how they act, just how they act. Unfortunately.

[00:10:33] Darryn Chenault: I think we got time for a couple more questions and then we'll probably wrap this up. So.

[00:10:40] Heather Tinney: This is an old adage, but a lot of us that used to be around UC heard this, that in order to stay safe, don't buy drugs. And if you do buy the drugs, pay for them. Is that still? That's a silly one.

[00:10:54] Darryn Chenault: Yeah, definitely. We all kind of open our eyes.

[00:10:58] Heather Tinney: I actually heard that from a UC police about 20 years ago.

[00:11:01] David Brinker: Really? Interesting.

[00:11:03] Darryn Chenault: I'm going to say stay away from drugs.

[00:11:04] Heather Tinney: I would agree with that too. I would say don't buy the drugs.

[00:11:08] David Brinker: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. You shouldn't be using drugs to begin with.

[00:11:12] Darryn Chenault: I think the biggest thing with that is, you know, the kids who are buying drugs off the street, you just don't know what's in it nowadays, you know, everything's being laced with fentanyl and something else. And, you know, I tell my kids all the time, just make sure you come home. So in order to do that, don't buy them. You know, I know for some kids, they are, you know, I won't say they're addicted to it, but they just want to experiment.

Yeah. So that's the key, because you don't know what's in it. You know, I know a couple of times I've been across a situation where the kid has experimented and it's been laced with fentanyl. And that's not something, you know, I want mom and dad to know that their kids are coming home.

I think as officers and everybody here, that's our biggest thing, is to send your kids back home.

[00:11:56] Heather Tinney: Right. And I ask that question mainly because we know that in Ohio, the situation's changed, right? Yes, marijuana is now legal. And so things are changing for parents as they send their kids here.

[00:12:10] David Brinker: But that, you know, that raises a whole other issue because, you know, marijuana is legal, but it's in specific forms. Right. So, you know, we have that problem sometimes up in. In the general public because someone might be smoking some marijuana, but legally, you know, you can't be out in the middle of a sidewalk just smoking a joint. Right. Just like alcohol. Alcohol is legal, but you can't walk down the street with a can of beer in your hand and walk around intoxicated. So that causes some confusion there. The biggest thing is abstain from it. That's what we really encourage. And if you're buying it, unfortunately, you know, some of the locals, you know, that they know, hey, this is a new college kid, and they might try to take advantage of you. That's how you end up with robberies and other things going on. So not only you have to worry about being laced and you could become very ill, sick, or even die, but you got to worry about being robbed because of locals know, hey, this is some new college kids up here, and they're gonna try to take advantage of them, and they're gonna take your backpack and your cell phone, your laptop or whatever it is, and your cash.

So that's always something you gotta be worried about as well as being robbed from purchasing that marijuana.

[00:13:09] Carra Sparks: Over the years, we've had multiple drug deals gone bad.

If you're gonna do that, obviously we don't want you to. But don't invite the dealer into your house to see everything that you have in your house. They know where you live, you know, maybe meet them somewhere or just do it outside.

Just try to be as smart as possible if you're doing stuff like that.

[00:13:32] Heather Tinney: I think the other question that a lot of parents have is for those that are living on campus in UC housing, what are some of the things that you see students do wrong that maybe bring problems into the housing? So, like, not watching the doors, not locking things. What do you see that they can be doing right?

[00:13:52] Darryn Chenault: Propping the doors open is one. That's the biggest one that stands out because my friend is coming in five minutes, so I'm gonna prop this door open, and that allows a homeless person or somebody off campus to come into the housing part.

I'm sure it's others out there, but.

[00:14:07] David Brinker: Really the biggest thing is, you know, say you're living in a residence hall on campus and you're getting. You're going into a locked facility because all residence halls have access control. So in order to get into it, you have to go through a locked door.

But then when you maybe get up to the third floor or whatever floor you're living on, the problem is you don't lock the door to your residence to your apartment, right? They leave that wide open. Hey, they leave their door wide open, then they go down the hall to their buddy's house and hang out with them.

But the problem is, on any given night, students let other friends and acquaintances into the residence hall, right?

So now, while you're down the hall in Kelly's room hanging out, playing PS4, whatever you're doing, Carra and his buddies came over and maybe Carra's got a friend who's not the most upstanding citizen, see that your room's wide open, and now he steals your PS4 system, right?

So you gotta be worried about the other students and who they're bringing in. You don't know who necessarily who they're bringing in.

So the key is, just because you're living in a locked facility, you still have to lock the door to your residence. Whenever you go in and out of that room, make sure you shut it. Make sure you lock it.

And then when you have people over, when you have, you know, when you're socializing and you invite friends over, because if you're living in a room with, say, three other roommates, they're going to invite people over who you don't know, right? And they're going to be in your room for the first time and now all your property's on display and just. You never know what could happen. So, you know, encourage to have conversations with your roommate, say, hey, listen, when you leave, please lock the door because I live here as well. I don't want my stuff stolen.

And please don't let random people into the room, because sometimes you have people who invite uninvited guests over. You wake up and there's some random dude sleeping on your couch, and that can cause some, some anxiety for people, and that creates tension for roommates.

So it's, it's tough. It's tough. So the key is communication. Talk to each other, talk to roommates. Hopefully you have good roommates that communicate well, respectful of each other, and you can work through those, through those challenges.

[00:16:03] Carra Sparks: Also, our fire guys would appreciate me saying, please don't overload the dryers.

They smoke, and I don't know if the clothes get ruined, but the fire department has to respond, and we see that a lot.

Also, watch your clothes as you're doing laundry. We've had clothes stolen right out of washing and drying machines, so that would really stink to lose your whole wardrobe.

[00:16:27] David Brinker: You made a great point. So the fire extinguisher hanging down from your ceiling in your room, that's not a clothesline. You know, you can't hang your shirts up on that.

[00:16:36] Heather Tinney: Also, don't do pull ups on the pipes in the Deacon.

[00:16:40] Carra Sparks: Don't hang decorations on the sprinkler system.

[00:16:42] Heather Tinney: Oh, yeah, yeah. Don't do pull ups on the pipes in the Deacon.

[00:16:46] Kelly Cantwell: And you all also talk about writing down serial numbers for your belongings, right?

[00:16:50] Carra Sparks: Yeah, anything of value. A laptop, a gaming system, your cell phone, any headphones, anything that's over a couple hundred dollars. I would keep track of the serial numbers in case they do get stolen. Most of the time, these things end up at pawn shops. So there is a chance, if you have your serial number, we could potentially get it back. So please keep track of your serial numbers.

[00:17:11] Heather Tinney: Are safes helpful?

[00:17:13] Kelly Cantwell: Don't save your serial numbers in your phone.

[00:17:15] Carra Sparks: Yeah, have them written down somewhere.

[00:17:17] Darryn Chenault: You said safes, like?

[00:17:18] Heather Tinney: Like safes in the room for putting stuff away in or?

[00:17:21] Darryn Chenault: Yeah, I would totally agree with a safe. Yeah. I mean, that just secures it even more. So. That's, that's always good.

[00:17:27] David Brinker: And the key is don't bring everything. You know, when you come here for the first time, they want to bring, like, their whole house with them. Right.

[00:17:32] Carra Sparks: Fish tanks.

[00:17:33] David Brinker: You don't need all this stuff. You know, just bring the bare, you know, the bare necessities. And then, you know, feel it out for a couple weeks and you'll figure out what you need and what you don't need, but you end up with all this property that you don't really need, then you just got to take it home.

[00:17:46] Heather Tinney: It's a lot to move. We always hit that, like, come with the minimum. There's a Target and a Kroger nearby, right. They can order Amazon right across the street. Anything that they don't have. You don't need to buy everything now.

[00:17:58] Darryn Chenault: That's right. Because once you move in, you got to move out.

[00:18:00] Heather Tinney: And we always show them the piles at the dumpsters of how much stuff gets left behind that never gets opened.

[00:18:09] Darryn Chenault: That's awesome. I appreciate it. I didn't know if you had another question or not, but.

[00:18:14] Heather Tinney: No, thank you, guys. This has been very informative. I've learned things. Like I said, I've been around UC for a long time, and I've learned things today I did not know before. I think my parents are going to really enjoy this.

[00:18:24] Darryn Chenault: Well, I want to thank, I definitely want to thank the Community Engagement team at the University of Cincinnati, and I also want to thank you for coming on today. It's been an honor to have you. Hopefully we can reach those parents and kind of get rid of some of that false sense of.

[00:18:41] Heather Tinney: Yeah.

[00:18:41] Darryn Chenault: That's going around with the parents, including myself. So obviously, thank you for helping us bridge that gap a little bit better.

[00:18:49] Kelly Cantwell: And I think maybe one of our biggest takeaways is we want to talk to parents. We want to engage with parents. We want to hear from you, we want to hear from your students.

So please don't hesitate to reach out to us. There are a lot of ways to reach out to us. Greg and Carra are great at talking to parents about their concerns. We have a public safety email.

We have a phone line. Talk to us.

[00:19:12] Heather Tinney: And I'll share all of those in our group. Keep them pinned.

[00:19:17] Darryn Chenault: Thank you.

[00:19:17] David Brinker: We appreciate that.

[00:19:18] Heather Tinney: Thank you.

[00:19:20] Darryn Chenault: And my mama would say we're done.

[00:19:45] Darryn Chenault: Thank you for joining us for part two.

[00:19:45] Kelly Cantwell: Hit subscribe to be notified when our next episode drops.

[00:19:48] Darryn Chenault: And we look forward to bridging the gap with you very soon. Have a great day.

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[00:00:00] Darryn Chenault: Hey. Hello. I am Police Officer Darren Chenault.

[00:00:03] Kelly Cantwell: And I'm Public Information Officer Kelly Cantwell. And we are the hosts of the University of Cincinnati Public Safety Department's podcast, Bridging the Gap.

[00:00:13] Darryn Chenault: Bridging the gap, indeed. Bridging the gap means furthering our connections with our community.

We hope that this podcast will be another way in which we can connect with you, the students, faculty, parents, and the community members so that we can share more about what we do and why we do it and learn more about our community needs.

[00:00:38] [Upbeat music]

[00:00:47] Darryn Chenault: So we're here. I'm glad to be here. We're here. Bridging the gap. I love that term, don't you, Kelly?

[00:00:54] Kelly Cantwell: I do.

[00:00:54] Darryn Chenault: Bridging the gap. Bridging the gap is between the University of Cincinnati Police Department and the UC community.

So we're thrilled to be here today with our first podcast. My host over here, Kelly Cantwell, Public Information Officer. I'm glad you're here to join us today.

[00:01:12] Kelly Cantwell: Absolutely. And you need to introduce yourself.

[00:01:15] Darryn Chenault: Obviously. Darryn Chenault. 20 years plus law enforcement with the University of Cincinnati. So great to be here. I'm joined by a crew today that I. Oh, I'm so proud of. I actually work with these guys, so. Community engagement, University of Cincinnati. Community engagement.

So I'm gonna let these guys introduce themselves, starting over here with Mr. Officer Valerius.

[00:01:40] Greg Valerius: Yeah, Officer Greg Valerius. I've been with UC for over 10 years now. Started out on patrol to eight years on night shift.

Got my master's degree while I was coming here to take advantage of the tuition, really like a lot of the benefits UC has to offer and, you know, the advantages we have working for such a big institution.

Spent our times at Blue Ash campus second shift patrol, and I've been in this assignment for the last year or so. Community engagement is a lot of community outreach, a lot of presentations, a lot of problem solving. We pretty much are the catch all the department. You know, wherever there's an issue, our office gets pretty busy.

[00:02:17] Carra Sparks: Carra Sparks.

I started here in 2009 as a security officer. I had just turned 19.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I just knew it paid a little bit more than I was currently making.

And it was retirement, full health benefits. And I text my dad and he said, apply ASAP. Free tuition.

So I've worked here 15 years now. I went to UC Clermont Police Academy in 2012, bumped up to full time police in 2014.

So I've been a police officer for over 10 years now, and I've been in community engagement for five years. I really just love our community meetings and giving presentations to our students, faculty, and staff and trying to educate everyone on how to be safe on and off campus.

[00:03:02] David Brinker: These guys, they really do a great job. So I'm David Brinker. I've been here for 21 years.

You know, when I was a kid, you know, some. Some officers, they dream they want to be an officer when they grow up. When I was growing up, I had really no idea what I wanted to do. You know, my biggest dream was being a garbage man. I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. Running around on the back of a garbage truck, throwing stuff in there. Back in the day, you had to pick it up and throw it in.

[00:03:23] Carra Sparks: I still want to do that now.

[00:03:23] David Brinker: It's all automatic.

[00:03:24] Carra Sparks: Yeah, I still want to do that.

[00:03:25] David Brinker: But I went to school and I actually got a degree in accounting and sitting behind a desk for, you know, a couple years, like, I don't know if I want to do this, you know, just doing a lot of, you know, numbers and paperwork. I was like, you know, I really want to get out and help people.

So I decided to go to the police academy. You know, I thought about fire service a little bit, but, man, you know, putting on that scva, too claustrophobic. That's not for me. I'd rather get shot at. But I'll never forget the day my dad was up cleaning the gutters. I was like, dad, I quit my job and I'm gonna go to the police academy. He's like, you did what?

So I went to the police academy.

Long story short, after some ins and outs, I ended up here. I've been here for 21 years.

I really like that analytical side. So I've done a lot of work in our investigative section at the time. Oversaw our investigative section. I really like that kind of puzzle work. Figuring things out and, you know, solving that puzzle and then helping people, you know, get their property back or, you know, helping them with whatever it is they want to accomplish.

But over the last couple years, I oversaw our community engagement unit. We did this big problem solving project with burglaries off campus. And with that, I got involved in community engagement side and really saw, like, the prevention. So really, in law enforcement, we want to try to prevent crime, not just respond to it. I really enjoyed that prevention piece, and I kind of got my foot in the door in community engagement. So here I am now.

[00:04:49] Darryn Chenault: That's awesome. Before I jump into my special, special guest today, I just want to make sure everybody knows that we're going to talk about safety on and off the campus. As a dad who has two daughters here at the university, that's been a big old concern of ours. So today I want to take the time to introduce our special guest, Ms. Heather Tenney. I'm going to let Heather talk about herself a little bit and shine that light on everything.

[00:05:18] Heather Tenney: Well, hi, I am Heather Tenney. I. I've been around UC in some form or another for about 25 years, either coming to hang out up here as a college kid myself, or my husband works here, or my kids go here.

And I run the UC Parents group on Facebook. We have about 10,000 parents who have students here at UC, and I hear a lot of what they're concerned about.

I hear a lot of what new parents are concerned about, what they want to know.

And I love this idea of getting together to figure out what we can do to prepare our students and what our students can be doing to be safer, what we as parents can do to help steward them as they make those transitions from being at home to being in college.

[00:06:07] Darryn Chenault: I tell you what, when I dropped my oldest off at campus here, I was so terrified.

And it's kind of. It's funny because I work down here in community engagement, so I kind of know what's going on. So today I have to play parent, fellas. I'm gonna jump out of this whole officer role, and I'll play parent.

What are you guys doing as far as community engagement to keep my two daughters safe, Officer Valerius?

[00:06:32] Greg Valerius: Put me on the spot right off the bat.

[00:06:36] Darryn Chenault: I'm gonna put you right on the spot because it's the only way to get it started.

[00:06:40] Greg Valerius: I mean, I think to talk about what we're doing, we have to acknowledge our difficulties, too. You know, as a police department, crime is going to evolve. You know, our complications are going to evolve. You know, technology is not what anyone imagined would be 10, 15 years ago.

On top of that, we're a campus police department, so our population changes every single year. And with that, you know, I feel like just like the professors and the staff, we have to educate the freshmen every year, try to get them up to speed, because they're coming from all walks of life. We have a very large, as your husband knows, international student base, and they're not even familiar. You know, forget about what Cincinnati is. What is the United States of America, you know, and where are the.

What. What's the sort of climate and. And way that they go about their everyday life around here? Because it's it's not the same as the Middle east or in Asia or wherever else you could be coming from. So that from there, from the get go, we are a, we have big hill to climb. My viewpoint.

So really one of the big things we do is we just try and be consistent. We try to be constantly improving, constantly trying to get out in front of it as best we can, but we don't always know what we're going to be faced with. A lot of times we get complaints from some neighborhood civilians that have nothing to do with uc, but they live in the area. And I tell them, I was like, you know, we try and get information out to our students about how to be good neighbors and that sort of thing, but. But we don't know what the problem house is gonna be till they're already a problem.

So it's like, how do you get out in front of that? How do you actually reach who is gonna be the issue ahead of time? If I knew that, I'd be making a lot more money doing something else. Right.

Because that would be the ultimate solution. So as far as what we do, we work with our community partners as much as we possibly can. There's not a meeting opportunity that we turn down as a community engagement unit. We, we are there everywhere we can be because we want people to know, first and foremost, reach out to us. We're here for you. So many people are timid to reach out to the police department. They think either wasting our time or they don't trust law enforcement or really they don't even know what we could do for them. They don't know what their rights are. And so really just building that bond from the get go and having them feel more like we're a resource for them is how I think our unit works to try to get out in front of the crime off campus.

[00:09:01] Darryn Chenault: That's awesome.

[00:09:03] David Brinker: Greg's making me proud. Couldn't say any better. Great job, Greg.

[00:09:06] Darryn Chenault: Ms. Tenney. I mean, what do you think and as far as your group goes, what are some of the concerns out there?

[00:09:13] Heather Tenney: I hear a lot about car break ins. Actually, I'm hearing a lot less this year about car break ins than we have in previous years. So whatever you guys have done to fix the gates and fix that has been amazing. But yeah, car break ins, we hear a lot. I hear a lot of questions about how safe is it to walk across campus late at night.

Right.

Is it safe to walk to raising canes at night?

And you know, there have been earlier in the year until it got really cold. There was, we heard a lot about some gun crime in the neighborhood. And so those are kinds of the things that I think our parents are most worried about.

How do they stop their kids from being victims and how do they stop their kids from being dumb? Because, you know, we all do dumb things when we're 18, 19, 20 years old, right?

[00:09:59] Kelly Cantwell: Absolutely.

[00:09:59] Heather Tenney: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:10:01] Carra Sparks: I'll hit on car break ins. The biggest thing that we tell our students whenever we get a chance to talk to a class of students, I talked to 30 yesterday in CCM.

If you have a car on campus or you live off campus and you park off campus, I should be able to look into your car and not see anything.

I don't want to see two quarters in a cup holder. I don't want to see a charging cord, an old pair of shoes on your backseat, a hoodie in your backseat. Because some of our local clientele, they could really use a hoodie.

If they're homeless or if they're an addict, that 50 cents could really help them out with whatever they're wanting to get. So don't make yourself an easy target.

Most of the time these bad guys will walk the street and they'll try door handles. So lock your car and then don't give them a reason to break the window to get into the car. And then once they're in your car, they go through the center console in the glove box looking for stuff. So keep as little amount of things in your car as possible.

[00:11:02] Heather Tenney: So a question that I've had, do dash cams help with that at all? Having a dash cam, does that prevent anything or do you see it not really effective?

[00:11:12] Carra Sparks: I'm not too familiar with dash cams. I don't have any, any knowledge on if that would prevent it. I would say probably not.

You know, especially if they're homeless or if they're an addict or if they're just a criminal. There's cameras everywhere. People don't care. Crime's still going to happen.

I think for a normal good citizen, they see a camera and they're like, oh, okay, good, that's nice. But the bad guys don't really care about cameras.

[00:11:39] Kelly Cantwell: So on that line, there are the things you shouldn't be doing. But what about like, are there any other products? I mean, there are steering wheel locks, but that's more for auto theft versus theft from autos, actually stealing a car. But is there anything parents can provide for their children if they're worried? Have you seen anything that's effective or is it more just Keeping your car clean and locked?

[00:12:02] Carra Sparks: Yeah, I don't think there's. Unless you know of something. I don't know of any products. I mean, I have tinted windows on my truck. They should be legal. But if that reduces the opportunity for the bad guy to look in and not see anything that could help you out.

But yeah, I think the biggest thing is just don't leave anything in plain view. Use the trunk, lock your door, and even the change in the cup holder, a charging cord, sunglasses on the dash, something like that.

They could easily sell something like that and get some cash.

[00:12:36] David Brinker: And the key here is opportunity. We want to take the opportunity away.

Greg, we had some videos recently for some off campus residents where they have like some ring doorbell cameras and it perfectly shows a bad guy walking up the driveway. As he's walking up, he's trying the door handles on the car. Right. He's looking for that opportunity to get in. This particular guy, he didn't want to create noise and attract himself by smashing a window, but he was looking for that opportunity just by.

So the biggest thing is to take that opportunity away. Don't have anything in the car. This is a constant battle for me with my kids and wife. You know, most cars today, a lot of the newer cars are a push button start, right. So what do people do? Just throw their keys in the cup holder or whatever. They get in, get out as they please. And I constantly preach to them, do not leave your keys in the car. And my daughter, she's young, she leaves her purse on the seat, gift cards laying around, and I try to tell her, please stop doing that. You know, as a dad, I'll take the stuff and I'll hide it for a day, see if she misses it. Half the time she doesn't even know I took it.

So it's a constant battle. But the key is education. And I like what you touched on earlier is prepare our students. So the key is try to educate them, prepare them as much as possible.

It's the old saying, you can take a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. Right. But we can just keep trying to educate them as best as we can and hopefully eventually it'll sink in.

[00:13:55] Darryn Chenault: We talked about some safety issues with walking at night.

What are some of the things we can do to walk at night? I know we talk about apps.

You see students have apps on their phones.

[00:14:06] Kelly Cantwell: Yeah, I can hit on that a little bit because I work a lot with our campus safety app. It's called Bearcat Guardian. We really try to push that out to students as much as possible and also parents to make them aware.

But that has a lot of really nice features. It has one that I think I would have used a lot as a college student. You know, my friends and I were always like, well, text me when you get back from the library. Because we would walk to our rooms at midnight or one in the morning.

And the Guardian app lets you select someone to watch you walk home. So it'll send them a text message. It can be anyone with a cell phone.

It'll send them a text message with a link. They can click on the link and then they can just watch you walk home. So a student can have their parent or their friend or anyone they want watching them walk home. It also lets you pick UC Police as a person that you can be notified.

And if you pick UC police, the police officers are not going to watch you walk home.

And I think generally, police speaking, students don't want that. But what it does do if you pick UC police is it notifies our dispatch if you don't turn off your safety timer in time. So they will get, if, if they're notified that you haven't turned off your safety timer, they get all your information from your Guardian profile. So I can't just go in and say, hey, this is Greg's phone number and he's currently using a timer. But if Greg's timer goes off because he didn't turn it off in time, I'm going to get his phone number and I'm going to get his safety profile information so I'll know if he has a medical condition that maybe our police officers should be aware of.

I'm going to know his local address. If he's filled that out, what his car looks like, you know, anything that he wants to provide, we would receive that. If he's not turning off his safety time or time.

So that's really nice because our officers get all that information before they respond. And our dispatcher can take that person's phone number and try to contact them. You know, maybe they just forgot to turn off their timer so they can try and contact them. But then we have an idea of where they might be because we would then have their location.

And it does remind you, the app reminds you to turn it off if you might have, like, gotten home and just kind of forgotten about it. But if, you know, if your daughter or your son picked you as the guardian, it would text you and tell you that they hadn't turned off their timer in time.

[00:16:40] Heather Tenney: Well, and I think that's. I didn't know that it had that feature. I think that's a brilliant idea.

Life360 is so popular amongst college students. They watch each other as they go places. I didn't know the Bearcat Guardian app did that. And also having a chance child on the spectrum. Right. And I know a lot of our parents have children on the spectrum or neurodivergent or anxious that having that feature where they know somebody is keeping track of them for that time and can call and check in. I think that's a really brilliant feature. I love that you guys do that. I didn't know that.

[00:17:14] Kelly Cantwell: Yeah.

Other thing that I really love about the app is it lets you have a conversation with UC police.

You know, it's. It can be hard to get a college student to make a phone call or someone might be in a situation where they cannot make a phone call, where they might escalate the situation that they're in by making a phone call.

So you can send UC police a message and it will go right into our dispatch center. It makes this obnoxious blaring noise on their computer. Like, there's no way our dispatcher is not going to know that your message just came through.

And it allows you to share your location in that message. It allows you to send pictures or videos in that message. So you can be providing us with all this information in real time. And it has an anonymous feature. So if someone is concerned, I mean, we always ask people to not use that if at all possible. But if the option is don't give us information or turn on anonymous, we would like the information.

So it has that feature too to allow people to share things with us. And we have had a couple situations where our dispatchers have received awards from the company that we use for this app because of how they've handled situations with that chat feature where they've been able to get help to students who have needed it through using that chat. You know, students who were in moments of crisis, they were able to get that help without escalating the. The situation. Because of that chat feature.

[00:18:43] Darryn Chenault: It sounds like we're doing a lot to protect our kids.

I'm impressed. I'm impressed.

Ms. Tenney, do you have any other questions?

[00:18:54] Heather Tenney: I think that. So one of the big questions we have in our group often is where is your jurisdiction in. So, for example, we have a rule in our group that we only allow published reports or UC reports when we talk about crime. But I had a parent contact me just two days ago. About a attempted break in at VP3 and they weren't sure whether to call UC Police or whether to call Cincinnati police on that.

[00:19:23] Darryn Chenault: My daughter stays in VP3. Hopefully that wasn't my wife calling.

I'm sure Lt. Brinker can probably address that.

[00:19:30] David Brinker: Yeah, that's a great question. We get that all the time. So our jurisdiction is university owned property.

[00:19:35] Heather Tenney: Okay.

[00:19:35] David Brinker: But it gets muddy because university right now there's a housing shortage on campus. So the university, we put students out in what's called block leases in apartments and different facilities just off campus.

So in that case, say VP3. And I don't know if we currently have a block lease of VP3 or not, but say the university puts Greg and Carra in an apartment in VP3 as part of a block lease. Technically they're off campus, but UC play. So that causes even more confusion. So I'll be calling UC police. Should I call some society police? You know, the biggest thing we say is if it's an emergency, you just call 911. Right? Call 911. And all you have to worry about is, you know, we're going to get resources to you and you don't care where it's coming from, whether it's Cincinnati or UC police, resources will get to you.

If it's a non emergency, say you know, you had your walk out to your car in the garage. Next thing you know you see the window bus there. Right. If you're unsure, I always advocate call UC police. You know, because we want to really pride ourselves on being resourceful for our students, faculty and staff. So call us and we can make that determination if it's our primary jurisdiction or not. And if it's not, we'll stay there with you. Call Cincinnati police, ask them to come over and get you the resources to help you out. So the number one thing is call 911 if it's an emergency. If you're unsure, call UC Police and we can help navigate that for you and help get you the resource that does come up a lot. So just on campus, again, our jurisdiction is your university owned property, but we have a lot of students that live just off campus and it's an area that we call our CSR. Have you ever heard that term before?

So the CSR stands for concentration of student residents. So many years ago the university did a survey and realized that, hey, you know, just off campus on Wheeler or Stratford Chickasaw, just be a short vine area.

We have a lot of kids that live in that area. Right, but technically it's not University owned property. But we have students living there, so we have a vested interest to make sure you know they're safe and be resourceful and help them out. So we created the CSR, which is don't hold me to the numbers here, but about a two mile radius around campus where we know there's a large concentration of students that live and in that area we tried to provide as much resources as possible to help serve those students.

Was you aware of that, Darryn?

[00:21:49] Darryn Chenault: I was a little bit.

Not so much in detail like that.

Remember, I'm new to the unit. No, that's awesome.

[00:21:56] David Brinker: Want to make those dads out there, you know, the goal is to inform those dads and make sure you have all the information.

[00:22:02] Darryn Chenault: I guess we're doing all right with our kids, huh?

[00:22:04] Heather Tenney: We're doing all right.

[00:22:05] Greg Valerius: I always push my presentations. Just because it's not our jurisdiction doesn't mean we don't care.

So you know, that's where, especially on seconds and third shift, that's where officers are patrolling. A lot of times we're driving around, we're actually have eyes and ears. If something's happening in that moment, 100% we're going to interfere. We're going to stop that crime from happening. We have mutual aid agreements with City of Cincinnati. We can make that stop. We can hold it and figure it out with our city partners. But we do a lot of community stuff off campus. We do a lot of flyer events, get information out there.

I've had landlords reach out to me. It's like saying, hey, I have some issues with my house. House. Tips for how the bear is cured. Better to work with the students to make sure they're not going to be victimized as much.

We've been involved in site planning and like a local church that's being redeveloped in Corryville, we're off campus a lot more people realize campus is always going to be our primary concern, of course, but our community is off campus, so we have to be out there. I don't want people to think that. Just because it's not our jurisdiction doesn't mean it's not our priority.

[00:23:06] Darryn Chenault: As a dad, do you guys often collaborate with the university and. Sorry, Cincinnati PD, 100%.

[00:23:14] Greg Valerius: I mean all of our officers have a number of Cincinnati officers personal cell phone numbers in their phones. We text each other constantly. We hang out outside of work. We work on projects all the time. I have a number of friends in that department.

There's a very strong bond between our officers and their officers. It's not this Strict wall where we won't talk or socialize with the other department.

[00:23:36] Heather Tenney: Well, and I just want to say that I know that, you know, warmer months bring higher crime rates. Right. And my kids noticed that when the crime was a little bit higher, they noticed your all's presence come up. They told me they noticed yours and Cincinnati police patrolling the Wheeler McMillan area a lot more. They said it was almost four times more from what they were used to. So they noticed that they noticed you guys recognizing that.

[00:24:00] Kelly Cantwell: So maybe someone could talk a little bit about how we use data and directive patrols.

[00:24:06] David Brinker: Sure. Carra, you good or you want me to go with it?

[00:24:08] Carra Sparks: I think that's a lieutenant talking.

[00:24:11] Darryn Chenault: That's the way to do that one.

[00:24:13] David Brinker: All right, I appreciate, Appreciate that.

[00:24:15] Darryn Chenault: Team makes the dream work right there.

[00:24:18] David Brinker: So, Heather, at the university, we collaborate very frequently with the city of Cincinnati.

So if you weren't aware or for our listeners out there that aren't aware, we have a monthly meeting called crime reduction. Have you ever heard of a crime reduction meeting?

[00:24:29] Heather Tenney: None of that one.

[00:24:30] David Brinker: So we have a monthly meeting with the Cincinnati Police Department. We actually just added earlier this week, Kelly. Right. Where we have the two districts that border UC, so we have District 4 and District 1. We have people from their command staff, from their investigative units, from their neighborhood liaison unit come to our department, and we actually go over all the crime data. So here at the University of Cincinnati, we have a crime analyst, and she looks at all the crime data and she provides us all the number to keep us abreast of what's going on, what the issues are, what could be trending, what's going down, so we can adjust our resources accordingly.

So based upon crime trends, we'll allocate those resources accordingly. So here at the University of Cincinnati, we actually contract with the city of Cincinnati to provide additional patrols in the areas based upon what's on, going, going on. So if we notice an uptick of vehicles being broken into or houses being broken into or whatever it is, we'll try to adjust those resources accordingly to provide some visibility. Because the key is we want to prevent crime from happening to begin with. So the key is to provide those what we call visibility patrols in the area. So hopefully it'll, you know, keep the bad guys or bad gals from doing things that are, you know, shouldn't be done and keep them from committing those crimes that begin with. So really pride herself on being data driven, looking at the data, looking at the trends to see what's going on, then adjusting our resources accordingly to try to prevent that crime from happening to begin with. Now, we gotta be realistic. We're all human beings, you know, we're living in a real world. So stuff's gonna happen, right? The crime's not gonna go away? Ideally, yeah, it would be nice to have no crime. But unfortunately, things happen. There is gonna be crime no matter where you're at in the world.

But the key is to try to be preventative as much as possible and look at that data and allocate resources accordingly to prevent things from happening.

[00:26:14] [Upbeat music]

[00:26:20] Kelly Cantwell: Thank you for listening to part one of our conversation with Heather Tenney. Head to our channel to hear part two.

[00:26:26] Darryn Chenault: Bridging the Gap.

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[00:00:00] Darryn Chenault: Safety matters, whether you are a University of Cincinnati student, parent or employee.

[00:00:05] Kelly Cantwell: Ever wonder what UC Public Safety does to protect our campus?

[00:00:09] Darryn Chenault: Or how you can stay ahead of potential risks? Join us each month for Bridging the Gap, the podcast that connects you to the people, programs, and tips that keep UC safe.

[00:00:21] Kelly Cantwell: Stay informed, stay prepared. Listen now at uc.edu/publicsafety or find Bridging the Gap wherever you stream your podcasts.