Everyone at Wesleyan can recognize a Public Safety vehicle from a mile away. P-Safe, as the service is affectionately known, is an omnipresent force on campus. But few of us really know the people inside the cars, the men and women who protect our lives and our possessions.
I talked to Lieutenant Paul Verrillo, an eight-year Public Safety officer, who unraveled many of the mysteries surrounding life behind the badge. He started by explaining the daily activities of an officer.
Wesleyan’s campus is divided into sectors, and each officer on duty takes one to patrol. On weekdays, three cars circulate and one officer takes a walking route; on weekend nights, an additional officer also makes the rounds. A dispatcher is always available in the Public Safety office.
“The dispatcher is the hub of the wheel,” Verrillo said. “He takes phone calls and dispatches them to the officers in the field. He gets as much information as he can; he knows where everyone is. He directs everybody.”
Verrillo is a supervisor, so he floats between sectors, checking in with each officer throughout the night and showing up to direct activities if a serious incident occurs. Most duties of a Public Safety officer, however, would not make for an exciting episode of “Cops”—officers help students locked out of their rooms, lock up buildings and serve as medical escorts. Verrillo explained that Public Safety is not licensed to perform some of the tasks of a police force.
“We’re not sworn officers,” he said. “We’re unarmed. We don’t have arrest warrants. We can [only] detain people on our campus. We have handcuffs, but…we can only use them in a serious incident, and then turn [a suspect] over to Middletown police.”
This year, Public Safety officers have had to use their handcuffs in a number of robberies and assaults. Verrillo discussed the attempted burglary at Freeman Athletic Center last week.
“A suspect was caught in the locker room of Freeman by a member of the wrestling team. There were fifteen [Wesleyan students] and one [suspect], so they held him until we came,” he said.
Verrillo emphasized that, while students should not usually take matters into their own hands, they can help prevent crime by notifying Public Safety as soon as a situation arises.
“We saw at the beginning of the year [several] laptop thefts,” he said. “Students were calling us with notice right away, and that helped so much. If everyone works together, we’re much more likely to stop [crime].”
Verrillo pointed out that an assault or a robbery can happen on any day of the week. But some risks do become greater on Friday and Saturday nights.
“We do party checks,” he explained. “They’re pretty standard. The people giving the party fill out a form and submit it to the Dean’s Office. Usually we make two checks—someone goes when the party starts and when they change shifts, someone else goes. We check in with the people giving the party and tell them to give us a call if they have any problems. Sometimes there’s an occupancy limits issue, which is based on the fire marshall’s office.”
If the host of a party does not get permission from the Dean’s Office and more than 49 guests arrive, Public Safety has to break it up.
“It’s more of a safety issue than, ‘you can’t have a party,’” Verrillo said. “If we show up and there are one hundred people in the house, that’s a problem. If you have under fifty people you just have to keep it down.”
Public Safety usually finds out about unofficial parties through neighbors who call in with noise complaints, or by patrolling and seeing a large group gathered outside.
Despite the sometimes disciplinary role of Public Safety officers, Verrillo believes that relations with the student body are good.
“It’s a small campus and students are for the most part cooperative,” he said. “My philosophy is the same here or anywhere: I treat people the way I want to be treated. Our approval rating last year was [around] eighty percent, which is one of the highest among universities.”
At the end of our talk, he again stressed the connection between cooperation and crime prevention.
“The most important thing is if people see something [wrong], they should call,” he said. “If we get a call a couple hours later, we can’t do anything. If there’s four or five of us out there and 2,700 students watching, we can take care of things.”
Leave a Reply