He says the program has succeeded in bringing police officers closer to the students they serve.

"Students have had very, very few complaints about officers' behavior in the past few years," he says. "Students have come to respect and know the police officers more now that they're around and in the Houses."

Under the community policing model, a student's first encounter with Harvard police officers may come during a community safety presentation during the first few days of school.

James Y. J. Ko '00, a former prefect, says these HUPD presentations given to all first-year proctor groups, "reinforce the fact that [officers] are people that care about our safety first and foremost, but they also show that they care about us as people and they're interested in getting to know us as well."

Other recent HUPD-organized outreach programs include the addition of HUPD substations in Harvard Yard, the Quad, Harvard Business School and the River area, as well as the bike and laptop registration programs and Rape Aggression Defense classes.

Ko, who has also served as a proctor in the Harvard Summer School Secondary School Program, says he thinks campus police officers' extensive interaction with Harvard students--based on reaching out to students before crime occurs--is fairly unusual.

"I know from friends that go or have gone to other colleges, the relationship between the students and [the police department] is antagonistic, but I don't think that's the case at Harvard," he says. "In all of my dealings with them, I've experienced nothing but good things."