IU centralizes all campus police, adds director

IU is advertising a newly created position that would centralize the public safety and emergency management structures at IU’s multiple campuses.

The new position, director of public safety, will serve as the liaison between current IU campus police chiefs and Mark Bruhn, associate vice president for assurance and public safety.

As IU President Michael McRobbie took office, he was concerned about how police departments would respond to emergency situations, IU spokesman Larry MacIntyre said.

After being named president, McRobbie questioned John Applegate, vice president for policy and planning, about the organization of the University-wide police and public safety response structure.

It was Applegate’s recommendation to McRobbie to centralize the campus police departments after a detailed study was conducted.

“By creating a single department with the same standards on every campus, officers at each campus will operate under the same procedure and policy,” MacIntyre said.

One noticeable change will be the uniforms of the officers. Currently, the uniforms of police officers and decals on the police cruisers differ from campus to campus. Mainly, however, the goal of this uniformity is to allow the director of public safety to report to Bruhn instead of multiple police chiefs.

“If you have seven different departments, they are reporting to seven different people,” Applegate said. “Organizationally, this makes things very difficult.”

The sharing of resources and the ease of mobility will be another advantage to the new system, especially in emergency situations.

“We’ve had emergency situations before,” MacIntyre said. “IU-Northwest was evacuated last spring because of flooding.”

Applegate admits that the majority of the goals anticipated with this change could be completed without altering the current public safety system in place.

“In a theoretical sense, some of this could be done without having someone in place whose job it is to make this happen,” Applegate said. “The fact is, these
collaborative activities don’t happen on their own and things are often left on the backburner.”

Although there will be a sharing of University police resources, IUPD Lt. Craig Munroe does not foresee officers transferring to other campuses against their will.

“Although we have done it temporarily, I wouldn’t see it forcing anyone to move,” Munroe said.

The goal of centralizing the departments is not to hinder any of the officers but to allow them to benefit by working together.

“The idea is to be able to take advantage of the fact we will have a single, larger police force than we do in individual pieces,” Applegate said. “We are one University, and as one, we are about having the safest environment for IU’s entirety.”