The UC Riverside campus police department is moving from an enforcement approach to one of guardianship, where they work with other departments to offer resources like basic needs assistance and counseling to best serve the campus community. As such, they’ve hired a team of four non-sworn, unarmed campus safety responders to respond to issues where armed officers aren’t needed. The department is now grouped within the Health, Well-Being and Safety division. And their new campus safety director and police chief Jeff Talbott believes, “What we’re doing here at UCR with the whole re-envisioning and the holistic approach, that’s the direction that policing needs to go and it’s the direction policing should have gone a long time ago.”
Talbott sees a large part of his job being out and about on campus, meeting with faculty, staff and students. “On a campus you are much more ingrained and a part of the community,” he said. “You have to listen, you have to respond to the community in the way they want their services delivered.”
You can read more about UC Riverside’s approach here.
