University Police soon will begin phasing in a flexible team of officers to patrol Northwestern’s Evanston Campus during more dangerous hours of the day, said Daniel McAleer, assistant chief of UP.
The team — called the problem-oriented policing shift, or “POP” team — will be composed of five officers who can be shuffled from shift to shift depending on when crimes take place, McAleer said.
A bare-bones team will start patrolling campus this quarter from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. alongside officers already on the same shift, McAleer said. Officers who normally patrol the Chicago Campus also might be added.
“They’re doing a shift overlap (with other officers) and trying to provide preventative control and visibility so we can keep our students from getting victimized by robbers and that sort of thing,” McAleer told The Daily last week.
Additional officers will be hired and trained before the team is fully phased in, McAleer said. He said he expects the team to be fully phased-in between Spring Quarter and the end of the school year.
This addition is part of an ongoing UP reorganization and support for the existing officer force in light of a rash of attacks on students during the past year.
Administrators allocated about $400,000 to UP last spring to hire 10 new police and security officers, reorganize policing shifts and provide UP with greater flexibility in handling problems.
The POP team is just one part of the $400,000 effort, McAleer said.
“We couldn’t have put the POP team together without the additional staffing,” McAleer said. “That was the goal of the additional staffing — to provide us with greater flexibility.”
McAleer said he expects to achieve the goal of training 10 new police and security officers by the end of this school year.
Two new officers currently are undergoing training in the police academy while two new officers completed their academy training over the summer and began field training with experienced UP officers in the fall, he said.
Meanwhile, two community service officers were hired over the summer to assist with communications and parking enforcement, McAleer said. The university also set aside money last spring to continue “Wildcat patrols,” in which security officers patrol campus roads in golf carts.
Greater flexibility with officers’ schedules and department resources has been a growing priority for UP as more students have been attacked or robbed on or near campus, said Eugene Sunshine, NU’s senior vice president for business and finance.
“Flexibility is important for (the police) to have as far as deploying their resources as needs arise, or as they proactively try and get out front of possible problems,” Sunshine said.
