Police Chief Carmichael: What's changed, what's in the works

by Dave Jones
November 09, 2012

Last week, Chancellor Linda P. B. Katehi announced a new task force that will evaluate the campus's progress on recommendations and reforms stemming from the Nov. 18, 2011, pepper-spray incident. Many of those recommendations and reforms concern the administration and operations of the campus Police Department. Dateline UC Davis spoke with Chief Matt Carmichael about what's changed in the past year, and what else is in the works.

Carmichael

You've been police chief for just over eight months. What are some of the key changes in that time?

When I accepted the job as chief, I said my top priority would be rebuilding the relationship between the police and the campus community and especially students. We've taken some important steps in that direction. And I also said that we would have a top-to-bottom review of the department, conducted by POST (California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training) — that is under way — and overhaul the department’s policy manuals. I've been meeting with students and campus groups over the past few months to get their input on policy. We have held one town hall on policy and plan to host another shortly.

We are in the process of customizing manuals from Lexipol, which sets the national standard for police policy, and that is going well. Our new policy manuals will be online so anyone can look them up. They will be updated automatically and there are built-in training modules to keep officers up to date.

As we progress, we will be working not only collaboratively with our community, we will also be working with the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), which will review draft policy and provide valued input.

What are you doing to bring the Police Department closer to the campus community?

One of the visible things is you can see a lot more bicycle officers around the core campus. They are more approachable than officers in cars. It's much easier for a bike officer to stop and chat or for someone to flag them down and ask them something.

We have also overhauled our new officer orientation. Traditionally new hires would be driven around — "Here's this building, here's that building." We still do that basic orientation, but now we also have the new officers go hit the pavement and spend a day walking around campus. Led by a student, the new officers will drop in on the Cross Cultural Center, Student Community Center, Student Affairs, Student Housing, et cetera, introduce themselves and get to know people one on one. It helps them put faces to names, get to know people they will work with. We are working hard to refine and improve this new feature.

Coming up in winter quarter we will be relaunching our Citizens Academy. This will be one evening a week for nine weeks, where you’ll get to learn about our department, what we do and how we do it, go on ride-alongs, and so on. We will be advertising that soon and taking sign-ups.

The Reynoso report recommended more involvement of students in policing campus. What are you doing about that?

Of course, we have the existing Aggie Host program, about 100 student employees who provide the nighttime escort service, provide event security. I’ve actually taken the funding for two vacant police officer positions to help support a student program that focuses on nighttime facility security. This program has been up and running since June and has already made a major impact on overall campus security, not to mention the added 20 or so student positions.

We have also revived our Volunteers in Police Service program. This is a great opportunity for students to volunteer with the Police Department, really learn about what we do, and it's part of a national program.

Something I'm very excited about is that we are going to start our first student cadet program next quarter. I hope we're going to have about 20 seniors enroll. The intent of the program is to provide our UC Davis students who are interested in a career in law enforcement the opportunity to attend a pre-police academy. This will prepare our students to be successful in a future basic police academy.

Think of this: If we run this cadet program every year and we have the opportunity to hire one police officer from this program, it will not only help to bridge the gap between the community and police, it will increase the diversity of our hiring pool and promote the academic mission of our institution.

What's going to be different next time there's a protest on campus?

Protests will happen. People have a right to express their views, and as police officers we absolutely respect that and encourage free expression. But sometimes expressing those views can run up against other peoples' views, or interfere with people going about their own business and getting their work done. When that happens, what you are going to see is that the university will approach that with a lot of patience and dialog and it will not be the police in the lead. We will not get involved unless the protest or demonstration raises serious life and safety issues.

When we do have to get involved, you are going to see well-trained professional officers, competent planning that is coordinated with campus leadership and collaboration with community partners on the ground.

My goal is to ensure that the community understands what police will and won't do and what you can expect at a protest. This was one of my top priorities when I became acting chief, to meet with ASUCD and student leaders and talk about protests. Together we came up with an information card for students that spells out, for example, what does it mean when police tell you to move? What happens if you are arrested? How do you file a complaint? So students can know what to expect. As a matter of fact, I recently forwarded that very card to the ACLU for review and input.

We have come a long way in the past year but we still have work to do. One of the recommendations of the Reynoso report was that the UC Davis Police Department should aim to become a model for campus policing, and that is what we are focused on and working toward. The men and women of the Police Department truly care about our Davis and Sacramento campus communities and I'm proud to be their chief.