UConn’s Police Department and Student Safety

As stu­dents, we are all con­stant­ly wor­ried about our safe­ty and if we have the prop­er resources to ask for help. In recent years, vio­lence has increased, and there have been safe­ty con­cerns. After the numer­ous cas­es of sex­u­al assault and reports of hate crimes on cam­pus, stu­dents have voiced how they feel about the admin­is­tra­tion. I sat down and inter­viewed Capt. Justin Gilbert, who works for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut’s Police Depart­ment. He has been work­ing for the depart­ment for 16 years and dis­cuss­es mea­sures that are set in place to ensure stu­dent safe­ty. He talks about his expe­ri­ences and how recent events have affect­ed the depart­ment. This episode will focus on the police depart­ment and all of the work they put toward pro­vid­ing their services.

Tran­script:

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: Hel­lo, every­one. My name is Dip­ty, and I am here today to dis­cuss stu­dent safe­ty on the store’s cam­pus and ask ques­tions about how meth­ods are used to keep the stu­dent body pro­tect­ed. On today’s episode, I would like to wel­come Cap­tain Justin Gilbert, who works for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut’s police department.

Capt. Justin Gilbert: I’m Cap­tain Justin Gilbert, a cap­tain in the police depart­ment. I’ve been here for 16 years. Cur­rent­ly, I am in charge of our detec­tive bureau. I have a bunch of oth­er admin­is­tra­tive tasks with projects, and our fleet man­age­ment are some of our spe­cial­ty units. Our detec­tives are here are also rep­re­sen­ta­tives on fed­er­al task forces. So, those all fall under my super­vi­sion. We do Inter­nal Affairs inves­ti­ga­tions up here. If there’s com­plaints about offi­cers, there’s intel­li­gence reports, things of that nature, about inci­dents or events that are hap­pen­ing on cam­pus. We help with some of the plan­ning with that. We also work with our oth­er state, fed­er­al, and local part­ners when it comes to any­thing that we need to work on, whether it’s a crim­i­nal case, or it’s an event plan­ning, things of that nature.

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: A cou­ple of things I want to ask about were the stu­dents that were falling vic­tim to car acci­dents. How do you go about those sit­u­a­tions, and what do you do in order for it to not hap­pen as often?

Capt. Justin Gilbert: Sure. So, car acci­dents, we respond and try to fig­ure out what hap­pened. Obvi­ous­ly, our first order of busi­ness is their med­ical well-being. So, if peo­ple are injured, we want to make sure help gets there, and they clean that up, and then we want to fig­ure out what hap­pened. If it’s tru­ly an acci­dent, we call them crash­es. So, depend­ing on what caused the inci­dent, whether it was dis­trac­tion or if it’s a road­way obstruc­tion, maybe it’s a light­ing issue or some­thing like that. If there’s oth­er fac­tors involved, then we can bring that stuff back to some of the plan­ning com­mit­tees on cam­pus to eval­u­ate the space. Maybe they’re doing that. Also, the state does their own sta­tis­tics. We fill out this form. It’s a state form. Every­body in Con­necti­cut that gets in a crash gets this form sub­mit­ted. So, they’re able to look at sta­tis­tics and say, all right, hey, maybe this inter­sec­tion is a prob­lem because we’ve been see­ing a lot of inci­dents here. I think we take a clos­er look at it, being that it’s our com­mu­ni­ty, with dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers from facil­i­ties, and UPDC, which is the plan­ning com­mit­tee for projects, and they have this group that meets reg­u­lar­ly to talk about areas for improve­ment. There’s actu­al­ly a pret­ty big pedes­tri­an safe­ty plan, that they have put togeth­er that you can look at right on the website.

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: Have you guys seen an increase in car acci­dents these past few years?

Capt. Justin Gilbert: I don’t have the num­bers in front of me to say whether they’ve gone up or down. I know we had a real­ly big lull dur­ing COVID because obvi­ous­ly our com­mu­ni­ty does­n’t reside here. So, I think those times def­i­nite­ly a lull, and I’m sure they’re back up maybe to a nor­mal lev­el or what­ev­er. It was nor­mal pri­or to, with some of that.

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: So, through­out cam­pus, I’ve noticed blue lights. How effec­tive do you think they are? And do you believe the response time is good?

Capt. Justin Gilbert: I think they’re effec­tive for a few rea­sons. I think when they were put in, peo­ple did­n’t have cell phones. I think that they’re there now, and they can pro­vide that same ser­vice. If you lost your cell phone, maybe some­thing hap­pened where you were being assault­ed, and you lost your cell phone. Well, you still have this refuge point to go to. To hit the but­ton. So, I think that in that way, there’s still an effec­tive tool to keep on cam­pus. Also, I think our response time is very quick. Once we have it, as long as we know what’s going on, we can hear it. Obvi­ous­ly, there’s equip­ment main­te­nance stuff that the uni­ver­si­ty takes care of to try to keep these things up and run­ning, but our response time is very quick when we know there’s an issue.

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: So, anoth­er ques­tion that I had relat­ing to a lot of inci­dents and emer­gen­cies that hap­pen on cam­pus. How do you deal with vio­lence and rob­beries in the down­town area? Because I do receive alerts, some­times crime alerts, about stuff that hap­pens down­town. How do you guys deal with these sorts of crimes?

Capt. Justin Gilbert: So, down­town. So, there’s juris­dic­tion­al issues with that. The state police cov­er all area that’s not uni­ver­si­ty prop­er­ty in Mans­field, specif­i­cal­ly. Obvi­ous­ly, you have oth­er cam­pus­es around, but there would be the state police inves­ti­ga­tion, so they’re real­ly respon­si­ble for the inves­ti­ga­tion. We just want to keep notes on it in case. Yes, maybe sus­pects com­ing onto our cam­pus, that could pose a risk, and maybe we can help with the inves­ti­ga­tion in some way, shape or form. So, we try to work togeth­er to try to solve those crimes, pre­vent thefts. I know we’ve had vehi­cle thefts and van­dalisms, stuff that have been tak­ing place. So, we try to work togeth­er to iden­ti­fy those sus­pects, as much as pos­si­ble to bring them through a suc­cess­ful conclusion.

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: So, stu­dents that live off-cam­pus, do they have the same resources avail­able to them as stu­dents who live on-campus?

Capt. Justin Gilbert: I would say they, depend­ing on the resources you’re ask­ing for, I think peo­ple that live on-cam­pus have this entire depart­ment, Res­i­den­tial Life, that helps them, works with them, and con­nects with them. So, I think if you’re say­ing just from resources, across the board, I think peo­ple liv­ing on-cam­pus have those addi­tion­al staff, and peo­ple pay­ing atten­tion to them that they can go to if they see some­thing. It might be eas­i­er to see an RA and report it up that way ver­sus, hey, I live in an off-cam­pus apart­ment up the street and I’m not inter­act­ing with maybe some­one that’s a staff mem­ber for the uni­ver­si­ty. But I think there are a great deal of resources for every­body. I still think their off-cam­pus stu­dents have a lot of resources still avail­able to them as a stu­dent, whether it’s men­tal health or phys­i­cal health, or any­thing of that nature. There’s quite a bit of resources for everybody.

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: Do you think those resources, men­tal health resources, or just the police depart­ment in gen­er­al, could be bet­ter adver­tised for students?

Capt. Justin Gilbert: There prob­a­bly always is a bet­ter way. I know there was a big push with this inform. uconn.edu web­site, so that could maybe be adver­tised more, but try­ing to bring these resources togeth­er in one place so peo­ple could go there and find them. I think we all push our own resources depend­ing on which depart­ment we work for, but there’s just so many. So, like, all right, the police depart­ment, we have state resources, we have uni­ver­si­ty resources, we have what we can pro­vide to peo­ple. So, we have a lot more detail about that. And then, Dean of Stu­dents office has a lot of resources that they can pro­vide, and our CMHS has a lot of resources they can pro­vide. So, I think hav­ing one spot to send them, I think is good. It’s just maybe if peo­ple aren’t get­ting the mes­sage or don’t see it, maybe there’s a bet­ter way to go about get­ting that information.

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: Do you guys have Google forms or stuff that peo­ple can fill out, like anony­mous forms? Even if they live off-campus.

Capt. Justin Gilbert: For report­ing crimes?

Capt. Justin Gilbert: We do. We have an anony­mous tip line. They can call in, anony­mous­ly. We also have the live safe appli­ca­tion that allows that two-way anony­mous communication.

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: So how do you deal with stu­dents that show signs of vio­lence or have been reported?

Capt. Justin Gilbert: So, we’ll inves­ti­gate them. We look at them from our stand­point, which is twofold, and I think the uni­ver­si­ty’s is two-fold. You have account­abil­i­ty for any actions. Maybe it’s men­tal health relat­ed, maybe it’s crim­i­nal, but we always want to try to sup­port the per­son, or the peo­ple affect­ed by those things. So, we have obvi­ous­ly one of our pri­ma­ry roles is, it would be the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion. So, if peo­ple are threat­en­ing peo­ple, we’d have to look at that, eval­u­ate that there was prob­a­ble cause to believe a crime was com­mit­ted. For the statutes, then we would take nec­es­sary action. Juris­dic­tion is always a thing, too. Some­times, we get report­ed things here that did­n’t hap­pen here, and then we have to try to con­nect peo­ple to where those things need to be reported.

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: Just going off top­ic a lit­tle bit. If a stu­dent goes miss­ing, how do you make it known to the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion? How do you inform oth­er peo­ple to look for this cer­tain person?

Capt. Justin Gilbert: So, I think there is a bal­ance there. We get reports that peo­ple are miss­ing a lot of times. So, some of those things are maybe some­one can’t get a hold of some­body. There’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly a rea­son that they’re a dan­ger to them­selves, or maybe they’re in a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion. So, we need some time to fig­ure that out as best we can. So, I would say 95% of the peo­ple that are miss­ing, we find them pret­ty quick­ly and deter­mine what’s the cause. Occa­sion­al­ly, there’s an instance where some­one’s miss­ing and we need the help of the com­mu­ni­ty to try to find them.

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: Right, because I remem­ber ear­li­er this semes­ter there was a stu­dent that went miss­ing, and a post of her actu­al­ly went viral. So, how do you think that com­mu­ni­ty response helped?

Capt. Justin Gilbert: I think it was very good, and I think we were at that point, we need­ed the assis­tance. We could­n’t find her or con­nect the dots to what was going on specif­i­cal­ly based on what we had. So, we need­ed, hey, has any­body seen her? Any­body that could help pro­vide infor­ma­tion on maybe what was going on? So, that’s why we solicit­ed the help from the community.

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: Do inter­na­tion­al stu­dents have the same lev­el of pro­tec­tion? Are they told that they have the same lev­el of pro­tec­tion? Because I know that lan­guage bar­ri­ers can get in the way.

Capt. Justin Gilbert: There’s some spe­cif­ic pro­gram­ming with ori­en­ta­tion. I know we have, through our com­mu­ni­ty out­reach, kind of some spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion about that, because it’s a lot of things com­ing into this coun­try. There’s a lot of things that are dif­fer­ent here than from a vari­ety of cul­tures. So, I think there’s some of that there. I don’t know. I can’t speak to the per­cent­age of peo­ple that hear it, know it. We prob­a­bly can’t answer for all of the cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences with the amount of time that we have. So, they’re like, hey, this is some rules, to try to keep you safe. So, I think they get a lit­tle bit of that. They do have the same pro­tec­tions. They have the same rights, the same access to all the resources. And if not, they have even spe­cif­ic stuff. They have an office ded­i­cat­ed just to that to try to make sure their needs are being met.

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: How are par­ents con­tact­ed if an inter­na­tion­al stu­dent is missing?

Capt. Justin Gilbert: Yeah. So, with miss­ing per­son? Yes. We would want to call the par­ents, obvi­ous­ly, to say, hey, have you heard any­thing? Have you seen any­thing that would help us try to locate your child and we can call them? We’ve had help through that same office, I men­tioned. Some­times there’s lan­guage bar­ri­ers, so we try to get some­body who can help us in between. We need that. And, we have some resources avail­able to us that we can use, a lan­guage line, et cetera, if we need that. But usu­al­ly, we ask for some help from the uni­ver­si­ty, and some­one has some­body that can help us with trans­la­tion. We’ve had to tell peo­ple across the ocean that, hey, this is a ter­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion that’s hap­pened, and we’re able to com­mu­ni­cate with them, effec­tive­ly. I think the best we could.

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: In the past few years that you’ve been here, has any event kind of shaped you or kind of changed your per­spec­tive on stu­dent safety?

Capt. Justin Gilbert: That’s a good ques­tion. I don’t know if it’s one thing, but I think there’s a lot of events pub­licly, polit­i­cal­ly, that are moti­vat­ed and bring a lot of atten­tion to what police are doing, and how they’re pro­tect­ing the com­mu­ni­ty. And for me, we always have the stand­point that we have to keep evolv­ing with how we’re pro­vid­ing ser­vice to the com­mu­ni­ty to keep peo­ple safe, because I think it looks dif­fer­ent over time. Five years ago, ten years ago. So, active threat inci­dents hap­pen on cam­pus­es or in any space. We need to make sure we’re train­ing our folks to respond appro­pri­ate­ly, that we’re behav­ing appro­pri­ate­ly. The expec­ta­tions of us change as time goes on. So, kind of set those expec­ta­tions with each oth­er and under­stand that, hey, we’re all here to help, and try to keep peo­ple safe at the end of the day. So, what­ev­er we can do, whether it’s some­thing we’re doing wrong or it’s, hey, maybe you guys could do some­thing bet­ter. Leg­is­la­tion tries to cor­rect a lot of that. Obvi­ous­ly, that has a lot to do with what we do, because we fol­low the law right as those change, and it’s hap­pen­ing con­stant­ly. Use of force, for instance, or the Police Account­abil­i­ty Bill, where there’s things that change how busi­ness takes place one way or the oth­er. Some of those things may make peo­ple less safe, some may more safe. We don’t real­ly know, until kind of peo­ple see that, how that works.

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: Right. And in terms of safe­ty, I know there was a sup­posed mass shoot­ing that was sup­posed to hap­pen at UConn. So how did you guys go about that situation?

Capt. Justin Gilbert: And you’re talk­ing about the ─

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: Where Aaron Her­nan­dez’s broth­er was ─

Capt. Justin Gilbert: Cor­rect.

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: plan­ning a mass shoot­ing at UConn.

Capt. Justin Gilbert: Yeah. So, it’s kind of like any­thing we get, we have to hear what the infor­ma­tion is, deter­mine any cred­i­bil­i­ty, and take the appro­pri­ate action. So, it’s still an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion with some of our law enforce­ment part­ners, so I can’t speak a lot about the inves­ti­ga­tion. But we knew that he had come up here and that com­ments were made, and he was already in police cus­tody by the time we learned the extent of what was being planned. So, I think that was a win for us because by the time it hap­pened, he was already secured and in cus­tody. But there was still a lot of con­cern, obvi­ous­ly, from the com­mu­ni­ty that, hey, some­one had these com­ments, and if that’s what they were plan­ning to do, then what was going on? So, every­body looks at us to say, hey, what were you guys doing to keep us safe in those cir­cum­stances? And I can say that we ensured he was in cus­tody, and some­thing had been done about it, so that pro­tect­ed us. It did­n’t hap­pen. Part of that did­n’t hap­pen here. So, there were oth­er juris­dic­tions that we were work­ing with try to make sure that our com­mu­ni­ty was safe, and we also train to respond to these inci­dents. Active threats is a big con­cern of ours, and we train annu­al­ly, we have pol­i­cy on it to try to make sure every­body knows, hey, if this hap­pens, this is what we got to do. This is who we need to call. This is where we need to go. These are some of the part­ners we’re going to need to call in. This is stag­ing dif­fer­ent, whether, it’s ambu­lances or dif­fer­ent things like, we work through all of the things that need to hap­pen in a very quick amount of time, espe­cial­ly when if one of those inci­dents hap­pens, so obvi­ous­ly we want to pre­vent it, but if we don’t know about it, we did­n’t hear about it pri­or to it actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing, then we’re going to respond the best we can to try to pre­vent any loss of life or stop any fur­ther loss of life if it’s already happened.

Dip­ty Bhuiyan: After talk­ing to Cap­tain Justin Gilbert, it is clear that the uni­ver­si­ty will con­tin­ue to advo­cate for bet­ter safe­ty mea­sures for their stu­dents. Hope­ful­ly, their new web­site, inform. uconn.edu, will allow stu­dents to find all their resources in one place. Thanks for tun­ing into tonight’s episode. My name is Dip­ty, and I hope you come back to lis­ten soon.

 

Links to fur­ther research:

Inform Web­site
UConn Police Department
Aaron Her­nan­dez’s broth­er faces new charges amid con­cerns over threats, vis­its to UConn, Brown

Pic­ture cred­its:

Face­book Image of Capt. Justin Gilbert
Fea­tured Image and Sound­Cloud Cov­er Pho­to by Dip­ty Bhuiyan