Another semester is well underway at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus as thousands of students have returned to class.
As students and faculty return, the University of Minnesota Department of Public Safety is working to up its police presence across campus.
A 2023 UMPD Survey found that a physical police presence was a to priority among nearly 50% of the 627 respondents.
Upping that police presence is no easy task.
"There’s 2,700 acres, 80,000 people, and 270 buildings on campus. We have a lot going on here alone and to get pulled off campus to help is a difficult situation, but we're going to do as much as we can," said University of Minnesota Police Chief Matt Clark. "That means maintaining really good coordination and partnership with Minneapolis police, Hennepin County, and others. At the same time, we have to stay rooted on campus."
At full strength, the department would have between 71 and 73 police officers. The number of UMPD officers is currently in the upper 50s.
“What we’ve seen in the past six months is we're getting people from out of state and from other surrounding states coming in," Clark said.
A NEW APPROACH
To help hire more officers, the University of Minnesota Department of Public Safety hired a full-time recruiter earlier this year.
Christina Mignone is the recruitment, engagement, and mentorship associate.
Mignone recruits for positions within the Department of Public Safety and spearheads outreach efforts among new law enforcement students.
"If there’s people there that have general interests in becoming a police officer, we help make that pathway to create an opportunity to become a police officer with the University of Minnesota," Mignone said.
Mignone says the department is one that backs opportunity for growth, which can be a big selling point for new officers, or officers looking to make a lateral change from another department.
"Part of that is letting new students, whether at our college or not, understand what that looks like and paint that picture for them. You can go to school to be in law enforcement, but if you want to further your education this is an opportunity for you to do that and seek those benefits that we provide with our benefits package giving each person the opportunity to get their bachelor's or master's degree and have a portion of it covered."
Gone are the days of setting up a table at a job fair with the hopes of prospective employees approaching the department about job opportunities.
"We really have to come up with some creative ideas and find ways to engage people and kind of change up the old standard," said Nicholas Juarez, the Assistant Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion with the University of Minnesota Department of Public Safety. "We can't just go to a law enforcement career fair and set up a table and hope that they come and fill out a job application. We definitely have to expand beyond that."
With the changing hiring landscape, messaging must change.
"People that are interested in coming into this profession or even even just have a basic interest, like they're not sure this is the direction they want to go but they're willing to learn about it, they want somebody to walk alongside them to help them understand what that looks like. It could be just being that that mentor person for them," added Mignone. "The group of people we have that are interested right now that are coming forward, I've been able to mentor it's taking the time with them laying it out and actually talking through some of these goals and ideas and how they can better prepare themselves and having that pathway versus just I'm interested I'm going to school for it and now I'm going to apply for jobs."
Another piece of recruiting, according to Clark, is the officers within the University of Minnesota Department of Public Safety are part of a "specialty law enforcement agency."
"We want folks to come on board that want to work in a university environment," Clark said. "That makes it I think double difficult because working with university communities is different than working in a in a suburban or metropolitan kind of area. We we find that people wanna come here really want to work in this environment."
FINDING THE RIGHT PEOPLE
Chief Clark says there's a need for officers who have good discretion when it comes to policing a college campus.
"For the most part our students, the 50,000-plus students here they want to come to school, they want to get a great education, and then they want to advance themselves in their career," he said. "They want to raise families later on and do all the things that we all want to do. So our job is to get them in a time of their life when they're leaving home, they're trying to figure out who they are, how to handle things, and there's a lot of confusion with them. We are really as much a guidance counselor and guardian as we are anything else.
And it doesn't always mean making arrest in situations where police are needed on campus.
"My thing is always give them the benefit of the doubt, see if you can work with them advise them on what needs to happen. Sometimes that's 1-2 in the morning when you know they might be in a situation where they're not sure what to do and and your job is to try to get them that," Clark said. "I also say if you need to write a citation or make an arrest because it's appropriate then do that, but a lot of our stuff is working with new students especially to get through these four years get their degree and become productive citizens in the state of Minnesota and elsewhere."
THE NEXT STEP
A lack of field training officers (FTOs) is forcing University of Minnesota police to take fewer applicants than what they've had.
"That’s a good problem," Clark said. "In speaking with Ramsey County and Hennepin County chiefs, I know it's been challenging but number of applicants that departments have gone that's gone way down in the last couple years."
With the lack of FTOs, it's important to place an emphasis on the quality of training new department hires are receiving.
"That is our biggest problem right now is we just don’t have enough field training officers and the ones that we do have, they realize that the amount of work that goes into being an FTO," Juarez said. "We don't want to burn our FTOs out we don't want to overwork them. We want to make sure that the training that they're doing is quality and we're really emphasizing the culture of our department, as well as you know what we expect of the sworn officers here at the Department of Public Safety."
As police recruitment efforts continue at the University of Minnesota, Mignone believes there's room for optimism thanks to what the university can offer to new hires.
The mentorship and educational opportunities can help the department set itself apart from other police departments and agencies who are also looking to fill dwindling police forces.
"We have to go to college in order to be a police officer, not all states require that so there's something reputable to be said with that," Mignone said. "It also is something that we value as police officers that we're educated people. We're not just wanting to be a police officer and we can go be one. We actually have to work for it."
And with the vast landscape at the University of Minnesota and the number of daily interactions between the public and police, Clark says a right balance has to be struck, meaning that the people who protect and serve on campus have to be the right fit from day one.
"We take as many reports from victims much more than we do dealing with suspects. A lot of times your connection with those victims needs to be right on because this might be the first time they ever call you outside of being at home. So how we handle that really says something about our department and the culture," Clark added. "[Our officers] really have to understand that whole guidance counselor, guardian mentality. It just doesn't work in this environment not to have somebody that's really about, 'OK how do i help the situation versus I need right tickets.'"
