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Show PAGES UNIVERSITY JOURNAL FOCUS ON: DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY PAGE9 THURSDAY, MARCH 30, 200 0 Safety _ h aS a history he.r e BY AMANDA PRESLEY ANO MICHELLE ALVA JOURNAL STAFF WRITERS experience they gain from the Department of Public Safety as a tool for their Mure.· Turner also said, · students that are planning on studying law gain a lot of The security office at SUU was recently experience and knowledge aoout the basic renamed the Department of Public Safety. legal procedures.· The name, however, is the only thing that "Of all the departments on campus. has changed and it continues to function as besides the professors. we probably have a -regular police department. the most daily The department makes arrests, . - - ~ - - - - - - - - - - - . interaction with conducts investigations, and Turner 'We [the Department students," writes parking tickets. Its said. jurisdiction covers SUU's of Public Safety] have The department campus, including the rides a fine line good working observatory, farm and Mountain between helping Center. relationship with the students and In 1989 James Turner, a retired following the local agencies (police administration state trooper from the Salt Lake and department, sherrif's area, came to SUU and became state of Utah codes, the chief of the department. Turner. office, highway patrol)' said Turner is a state certified peace Before 1989, the said Jim Turner, chief campus had a small officer and was put in charge of staffing the department with other of the Department of security office officers. comprised mostly of Public Safety. • All full-time employees at the students. Its function security office are Utah officers ' - - - - - - - - - - - - - ~ was to have security and their first priority is the safety guards tum off lights of the students. faculty and visitors to the and lock doors throughout campus. Criminal university. acts were referred to the Cedar City Police. Although security is the first priority of the Now every college and university in the department, Turner also likes to make sure Utah system has a police department on that the students are able to become campus and these departments report to the involved. state and federal govemr:nents. Turner said, "Being involved in the Although SUU's department is not called a Department of Public Safety is a good way police department, criminals are booked into for students to set and achieve goals and the Iron Country Corrections Facility under object.i ves. Some SUU students use the ·suu Pplice: a Coul'lcil works with appeals From left, Eric Jolley. a senior. political science/criminal justice double major, from San Bernardino, Calif., Egan Gunnerson, a sophomore, political science/business double major from Boise, Idaho. and Chief Justice Matt Cannon, a senior, political science/E.nglish double major from Salt Lake City, meet for the Judicial Council. Students wishing to appeal parking tickets can bring their application to the Wednesday night meeting from 6-7 p.m. Matt Cannon recently took over as chief justice on the Judicial Council. "We have a good working relationship with the local agencies (police department, sheriff's office, highway patrol). If one of our officer's needs assistance, we call them (Cedar City police] and they call us if something is happening near the school. We work together on almost a daily basis," Turner said. · Training for SUU's officers goes beyond the regular training that officers receive in the academy. Campus police have training in women's crisis, technology and drug and alcohol awareness. ·we·have the opportunity to try and help students or direct them to social services where they can get help for drug or alcohol problems,· Turner said. The campus police have to deal with the challenges of a growing campus and the large numbers that attend SUU during the summer months. Turner explained that the Shakespeare Festival, Utah Summer Games and various athletic camps held throughout the summer strains manpower, equipment and budget of the department. "More people equals more problems. We have the same crime rate as Weber State but it's twice our size and doesn't deal with the large numbers.· Currently there are 15 students working with the department. Two are secretaries who process tickets and work in the office. There are designated ticket writers and also night and weekend lock-up officers who work throughout the night. They are also available to un-lock car doors when needed. ~ ~ :il ::; ~ ~ Emergency blue phones are located in frve places on campus. One is near Old Main, one is east of the Braithwaite Fine Arts Gallery, another is between the Centrom Arena and the Physical Education Building and one is on the north side of the Centrom Arena. Phones .are near the sidewalks with higher traffic, so students can access them easily. Blue phones secure .campus BY SHELLY BROWN SENIOR STAFF WRITER Students appeal parking tickets on a ·weekly ·basis According to Chief Justice Matt Cannon, students should bring their application to the council meeting Wednesday nights from 6-7 p.m. The student will appear before five members and a majority vote will If there's one thing students complain about-it's appeal the ticket. parking, whether it's about not finding a parking spot, The Department of Public Safety also meets every receiving a ticket or having to park too far away. The Department of Public Safety issues parking Tuesday and Thursday from 2-4 p.m. for ticket tickets on campus. appeals. According to Turner, one of the biggest According to Jim Turner, chief of parking problems occurs when there are the Department of Public Safety, According to Jim special events on campus. Campus about 70 tickets a day are issued on guests park in on-campus lots, resulting Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He Turner, chief of in less parking for students, faculty and said the department only issues the Department staff. about 40 tickets on Tuesdays and Turner said he would "highly, highly Thursdays because there are less of Public Safety, endorse a shuttle system: This would let people on campus. about 70 tickets campus guests park on the west side of Turner said the department has the stadium and be shuttled to where had many repeated problems with a day are issued they need to be without taking parking students parking illegally. Repeat offender's cars have been and will be on Monday, spots from students and faculty. A shuttle system would also enable towed. Wednesday and students to park farther away and be If students get a ticket on campus shuttled up to the main part of campus. they may appeal the ticket to the Friday. Turner also mentioned a public department or the SUUSA Judicial transportation system as a possible Council. solution to parking problems. According to Turner, about 5-10 students appeal VVhen it comes to parking, something to remember tickets every week. Toward the end of the semester, is how good SUU students have it. Turner said the numper of appeals increase because students compared to the University of Utah and many other can't register until their tickets are taken care of. Students can pick up applications for ticket appeals schools, the centrum parking lot on the west side of campus is prime parking. in the SUUSA offices. j 8 BY MINDY SMITH JOURNAL STAFF WRITER The Department of Public Satety has seNed as security for SUU's campus for 11 years. Jim Turner, chief of the department. said the department has 'always been here to help the students.' If students want to gain hands-on experience about basic security procedures, public safety is a good starting place. Turner said, 'The jobs that the students participate in are very safe. We would never put our students in jeopardy.' Every time a student picks up one of the five blue emergency phones positioned around SUU's campus the student is immediately dialed through to SUU's Department of Public Safety in the Sharwan Smith Center. According to Patricia Gardner, secretary for the security office, that feature makes the phones easy to use. "[The student] just picks up the phone, and it dials directly in to our office, there is no need to dial or anything like that. [The student] will get a recorded message, and then they just speak into the receiver,· said Gardner. According to Gardner, the message is just long enough to tell where the blue light is located on campus. Gardner said that the response time for the calls that come in is fairly short. "As soon as we get the call in, depending on where the blue phone is on campus, it's just a matter of seconds. When a student uses a blue phone to make a call, it comes through on our monitor indicating which phone on campus is being called." Gardner said that it doesn't matter~when the call is made, if there is no one in the office it goes directly out to the city dispatch. Jim Turner, chief of the Department of Public Safety, said it usually takes only minutes for security to reach the caller. · we're probably about three to four minutes away, depending on where the phone is,· said Turner. Gardner also said that not all of the calls the security office gets are re.al, though. ·we do have a lot of pranks. Probably threefourths or more of the calls that we get on the blue phones are pranks,· sald Gardner. Gardner said that the worst problems with pranks come when there is a reason for middle and high school students to be on campus. · "Most of it's with the middle school kids. Or if there's a tournament here on campus. or some other reason for there to be a lot of high school kids here. Those are the times when we have the most trouble with pranks," said Gardner. Turner gave an even higher number than Gardner. He said that about 99 percent of the calls they get in are prank calls. He also said that prank calls cost the school money. "Our officer responds [to a prank call] and makes sure that the surrounding area is secure because we want to make sure we know just what we have. So it's that officer's time. equipment and whatever else it takes to respond to that call." said Turner. Gardner said that both student security and regular officers patrol the campus, which helps cut down on the prank calls. Turner said the department also tries to catch the pranksters. "We try to identify those people that make the calls, and.then we prosecute them. We've made some arrests. normally they are juveniles. and so we have to send them through the juvenile court,· said Turner. Turner said the department does not get a lot of serious calls, although the security office has a different definition of serious-than most people would think. "VVhat is serious? We feel that if, for instance, a young lady is in a situation where she needs to cross campus really late at night, and she j ust feels uncomfortable, we would feel better if she would give us a call on the blue phone. We would come and escort her to where she needed to go. There's no bleeding, but to her it's serious and to us its ' serious,· said Turner. . I· |