The Chief's Strategy
He encourages officers to meet and communicate with individual students to become familiar with their concerns. Officers know many students by name, eat meals in the campus dining halls and stop and chat while on foot or bike patrol.
Riley has extended this policy to HUPD's handling of student activism on campus. He knows many PSLM members by name, as do some of the officers.
During PSLM's most recent demonstration, members misdirected HUPD to stage a series of three unannounced living wage "teach-ins" in Mass Hall, the Office of Labor Relations and the University Development Office. Yet, officers bantered with protesters throughout the two-hour action.
Two officers even joined a handful of the protesters they had just evicted from the Development Office for lunch in the Eliot House dining hall.
"When students see officers they know, they feel they are less likely to oppress them and bully them. On the flip side, when police officers see students they know [at demonstrations] who they understand are there to make a point, it defuses tension," Riley says.
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