Bridging the Gap Podcast

[00:00:00] Darryn Chenault: Hello. And we're back to bridging the gap.

[00:00:04] Kelly Cantwell: We are so glad you decided to join us for part two of our conversation with Heather Tinney, addressing common safety questions from parents of our UC students.

[00:00:26] Heather Tinney: I have all these new parents.

What can we as parents be doing? Or let me say it this way. What's the things you see students doing that they probably get themselves into trouble doing? What are the things we can warn them about ahead of time?

[00:00:38] Carra Sparks: Great question.

[00:00:39] Darryn Chenault: That is a great question. Because the turnover is big every year. Obviously we get incoming students every year, so. Wow. I guess the number one thing is kind of get educated. Officer Sparks?

[00:00:50] Carra Sparks: Make smart decisions.

You know, we're not stupid. We know that part of the college experience for many kids is drinking and maybe experiencing other things.

Just be smart about it. And also, we are here to help you if something is going wrong. Maybe you had a bunch of kids to a, bunch of students to your residence hall room, and now there's 30 kids packed in a residence hall room with a bunch of alcohol. And this is not what you want it to happen. It just kind of got out of control.

Call us on yourself.

Make it look like you're not the bad person having a huge party in your dorm room.

We also have the amnesty policy. So if you come to your residence hall room and maybe your roommate is incapacitated, call us. We'll get them the help that they need. We'll get them to the hospital, we'll do an information report, and they'll get sent the student code of conduct.

We don't want someone to be afraid to call police and have a student not survive because they drank too much or took some drugs or, you know, whatever the situation may be, we are truly here to help you.

We want all of our students to learn, earn, and return.

So learn while you're here.

[00:02:07] David Brinker: Did you coin that yourself?

[00:02:08] Carra Sparks: No, that was a Jim Vestring quote.

[00:02:10] David Brinker: I like it.

[00:02:10] Carra Sparks: A retired police officer and he had one son that went here who's an engineer, but yeah, so learn while you're here. Earn once you graduate, make lots of money and then return money to the university. Get a building named after yourself.

[00:02:23] Darryn Chenault: I like that one.

[00:02:24] Carra Sparks: But yeah, we truly care about your safety.

And, you know, mental health is also a huge thing that we deal with. And we pride ourselves on our mental health response to our students that are having mental health crisis. So please do not hesitate to call UC police.

[00:02:41] Greg Valerius: I would say general awareness. I mean, I don't think it's even a generational thing. I think it's just society now. If you have downtime, you're pulling up that phone. When you're standing on the sidewalk, are you paying attention to what's going around you or are you checking what's new on your social media app? I think we all do that. So I think really pushing that awareness, like, hey, maybe look up, see what's going on around you. You know, more than just traffic. But, you know, be more aware. Don't just have your face in your phone when you're walking around in a strange area or if you're not with someone else, like, especially if you're by yourself, be more aware of what's going on around you. Everyone seems to have AirPods or headphones in, so they're not even hearing anything anymore. So take one AirPod out or just, you know, put it on mute while you're crossing the street. I think just the simpler steps for safety are the most effective. And I think just general awareness and general, just be on the lookout and trusting your gut, I think is some of the best things you can do to stay safe while you're here.

[00:03:35] David Brinker: Greg made some good resources. I used the term earlier on resources, community. We want to be resourceful to our community members.

And really the biggest thing, if you're a new student on campus or just living off campus, be mindful of who you are and your own strengths and weaknesses. So obviously, if I have my. I have a daughter, she'll be here next year. So as a daughter, there's going to be different concerns for her safety versus my son when he comes to UC, right? So as a daughter, you know, hey, if you go out to a party, I want you to be mindful of, hopefully you're not drinking and doing stuff like that, but if you are, I want you to be smart about it. You know, have a buddy system and be aware.

International students, we have a big international student population and look at the times, what's going on now. Our country is changing. We have a new presidency, new people coming in, and we've already seen it blowing up where, you know, international students are being targeted. Hey, they're going to send a message. Hey, unless you pay us this $10,000, you're going to be deported, that type of thing. So we want those international students to reach out to us. Hey, I got this message. Whether it's email, text, voicemail, come to UC if you see Officer Valerius on the street. Hey, can you help me out here? I'm really scared. I got this. I'm afraid I'm going to be deported and we can help vet that for you. So the key is, you know, depending on who you are as a student, where you're from, what your background is, we all have different strengths and weaknesses that we really need to be aware of and try to overcome.

[00:04:56] Darryn Chenault: What are some of the other concerns out there with the parents?

[00:05:01] Heather Tinney: This is a silly one, but why do the alerts and the clearances come from two different phone numbers?

Because not everybody gets the alert and the clearance. They might get one, but not the other.

[00:05:13] Kelly Cantwell: That is all to do with the company that we use. And we have no ability to make it come from just one phone number.

That was just one of those, like, technology things that you just can't fix.

And I think the other thing with technology is that it's not foolproof. So even me as the person who is sending some of these alerts, you know, I'm the one who hits that button sometimes. I don't always receive every single text to my phone.

That's one of the other things that. I mean, you get them via email, too. But then the students and faculty and staff who have that Guardian app also receive it on the Guardian app. And I get it faster on the Guardian app than it comes in any other method.

So.

[00:06:01] Heather Tinney: I know a lot of parents are concerned about the fights that happen after school lets out.

I think the being aware is probably a big part of it. I talk to my kids about that. Take the headphones off, be looking around you. They've had the benefit of traveling around the world, right? They've been overseas, so they've had that benefit, but a lot of students haven't. So what are some things that students can do to maybe be more aware in that situation or even to get themselves out of a bad situation when they're in it?

[00:06:30] Darryn Chenault: Now you talk about fights after school. Are you talking about the high school?

[00:06:33] Heather Tinney: Sometimes the high school. I'm also thinking of fights that happen as bars let out. Like, you know, nothing good happens at 2 a.m. as the bars let out. Right. So there are situations that they might find themselves in the middle of. How can they use the Guardian app or maybe extract themselves from these?

Anything they can do?

[00:06:53] Greg Valerius: I mean, get creative. I mean, all of a sudden, Mom's calling me, sorry, I gotta step out. I gotta get away from this. If you're in, like, an awkward situation, you get out.

I don't think there's a parent out there that if they texted you and say, hey, can you give me a call real quick? They're not just gonna call them right away, right?

You can call our department and, you know, and pretend like you're talking to someone else if you want to.

But really, most of the fights that we see on Calhoun street, and it's a growing issue, and our office is well aware of it and working on ways to, you know, combat that issue, is really. It's not so much random acts from what we've seen. It's more so these groups, every issue they have going in school, they decide to take it out on Calhoun street after the fact. So obviously, we don't want that to interfere with other people. We don't want it to happen in the first place.

But most of the time, from what I've seen, it's happening out there, and it's not really just grabbing random people and affecting them. So, like, if you see a group starting to congregate, you see a group starting to yell or have words, you know, get out of there.

A lot of times it's quick and over, and then, you know, we're right there to try and take care of it. But the fights haven't been as random acts, I would say.

[00:08:08] Darryn Chenault: And I think going back to what one of you guys said before, listen to your, pay attention to your gut. You know, a lot of our kids want to run to the fight to see what's going on and record it. Yeah, that's the worst thing you can do.

Go in the opposite direction. I tell my girls all the time, cross the street, go a different way. Maybe longer, but go a different way so you get home safe. And as far as being out late at night, I always use the excuse to get out of there before the actual bar closes. You know, you want to get out of there early.

I tell them to act like you're taking a phone call and you got to take it outside and keep on going. You know, that's the best way to kind of break yourself away from the situation, so to speak. I definitely understand where you're coming from. That's a big concern of mine, too.

[00:08:54] David Brinker: So the key, I think the key here is non escalation. De escalation is really the key. Remove yourself from the area if you have to create some type of distraction, but really don't want to escalate anything. You know, we don't want to get in confrontation. Unfortunately, when you're young, sometimes, maybe especially if you're a guy, you might want to challenge him a little bit, you know, that type of thing. And maybe your ego will get in the way, but we really encourage you not to do that. And really, non escalation, de escalation is really the key because as Greg mentioned, it's, you know, or Carra, you know, people like to get out their cell phones and record things. Next thing you know you got a big circle forming and, you know, just bad things can happen.

[00:09:30] Kelly Cantwell: So, and I think as a follow up to that too, people have a tendency to record things and they also have a tendency to not call 911.

You assume someone else is doing it or you're too busy trying to take a video, you're not going to call the police.

Don't assume someone else has called the police.

[00:09:46] David Brinker: Yeah, that's a great point. You know, and sometimes like on Calhoun Street, when we're dealing with some of the local kids in the area, some of the juveniles, sometimes it can be kind of hard to decipher what's going on because when these high school kids get out, you know, they're full of energy, they're kind of running around and sometimes it looks like maybe to you and I or someone in the area that they're fighting, really they're just playing around, you know what I mean? So it's all, it's kind of that. Is this really a fight going on here or are they just goofing around? So that causes, you know, some little bit anxiety as well. But you gotta, you know, kind of assess the area, try, try to analyze, you know, who's involved here. You know, if it's a high school kid, it may be just, you know, they're still a little bit immature, right? They just got that pent up energy because they got out of the school and they're kind of running around acting a little crazy. In reality, they're not there to harm anybody. They're just, it's just how they act, just how they act. Unfortunately.

[00:10:33] Darryn Chenault: I think we got time for a couple more questions and then we'll probably wrap this up. So.

[00:10:40] Heather Tinney: This is an old adage, but a lot of us that used to be around UC heard this, that in order to stay safe, don't buy drugs. And if you do buy the drugs, pay for them. Is that still? That's a silly one.

[00:10:54] Darryn Chenault: Yeah, definitely. We all kind of open our eyes.

[00:10:58] Heather Tinney: I actually heard that from a UC police about 20 years ago.

[00:11:01] David Brinker: Really? Interesting.

[00:11:03] Darryn Chenault: I'm going to say stay away from drugs.

[00:11:04] Heather Tinney: I would agree with that too. I would say don't buy the drugs.

[00:11:08] David Brinker: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. You shouldn't be using drugs to begin with.

[00:11:12] Darryn Chenault: I think the biggest thing with that is, you know, the kids who are buying drugs off the street, you just don't know what's in it nowadays, you know, everything's being laced with fentanyl and something else. And, you know, I tell my kids all the time, just make sure you come home. So in order to do that, don't buy them. You know, I know for some kids, they are, you know, I won't say they're addicted to it, but they just want to experiment.

Yeah. So that's the key, because you don't know what's in it. You know, I know a couple of times I've been across a situation where the kid has experimented and it's been laced with fentanyl. And that's not something, you know, I want mom and dad to know that their kids are coming home.

I think as officers and everybody here, that's our biggest thing, is to send your kids back home.

[00:11:56] Heather Tinney: Right. And I ask that question mainly because we know that in Ohio, the situation's changed, right? Yes, marijuana is now legal. And so things are changing for parents as they send their kids here.

[00:12:10] David Brinker: But that, you know, that raises a whole other issue because, you know, marijuana is legal, but it's in specific forms. Right. So, you know, we have that problem sometimes up in. In the general public because someone might be smoking some marijuana, but legally, you know, you can't be out in the middle of a sidewalk just smoking a joint. Right. Just like alcohol. Alcohol is legal, but you can't walk down the street with a can of beer in your hand and walk around intoxicated. So that causes some confusion there. The biggest thing is abstain from it. That's what we really encourage. And if you're buying it, unfortunately, you know, some of the locals, you know, that they know, hey, this is a new college kid, and they might try to take advantage of you. That's how you end up with robberies and other things going on. So not only you have to worry about being laced and you could become very ill, sick, or even die, but you got to worry about being robbed because of locals know, hey, this is some new college kids up here, and they're gonna try to take advantage of them, and they're gonna take your backpack and your cell phone, your laptop or whatever it is, and your cash.

So that's always something you gotta be worried about as well as being robbed from purchasing that marijuana.

[00:13:09] Carra Sparks: Over the years, we've had multiple drug deals gone bad.

If you're gonna do that, obviously we don't want you to. But don't invite the dealer into your house to see everything that you have in your house. They know where you live, you know, maybe meet them somewhere or just do it outside.

Just try to be as smart as possible if you're doing stuff like that.

[00:13:32] Heather Tinney: I think the other question that a lot of parents have is for those that are living on campus in UC housing, what are some of the things that you see students do wrong that maybe bring problems into the housing? So, like, not watching the doors, not locking things. What do you see that they can be doing right?

[00:13:52] Darryn Chenault: Propping the doors open is one. That's the biggest one that stands out because my friend is coming in five minutes, so I'm gonna prop this door open, and that allows a homeless person or somebody off campus to come into the housing part.

I'm sure it's others out there, but.

[00:14:07] David Brinker: Really the biggest thing is, you know, say you're living in a residence hall on campus and you're getting. You're going into a locked facility because all residence halls have access control. So in order to get into it, you have to go through a locked door.

But then when you maybe get up to the third floor or whatever floor you're living on, the problem is you don't lock the door to your residence to your apartment, right? They leave that wide open. Hey, they leave their door wide open, then they go down the hall to their buddy's house and hang out with them.

But the problem is, on any given night, students let other friends and acquaintances into the residence hall, right?

So now, while you're down the hall in Kelly's room hanging out, playing PS4, whatever you're doing, Carra and his buddies came over and maybe Carra's got a friend who's not the most upstanding citizen, see that your room's wide open, and now he steals your PS4 system, right?

So you gotta be worried about the other students and who they're bringing in. You don't know who necessarily who they're bringing in.

So the key is, just because you're living in a locked facility, you still have to lock the door to your residence. Whenever you go in and out of that room, make sure you shut it. Make sure you lock it.

And then when you have people over, when you have, you know, when you're socializing and you invite friends over, because if you're living in a room with, say, three other roommates, they're going to invite people over who you don't know, right? And they're going to be in your room for the first time and now all your property's on display and just. You never know what could happen. So, you know, encourage to have conversations with your roommate, say, hey, listen, when you leave, please lock the door because I live here as well. I don't want my stuff stolen.

And please don't let random people into the room, because sometimes you have people who invite uninvited guests over. You wake up and there's some random dude sleeping on your couch, and that can cause some, some anxiety for people, and that creates tension for roommates.

So it's, it's tough. It's tough. So the key is communication. Talk to each other, talk to roommates. Hopefully you have good roommates that communicate well, respectful of each other, and you can work through those, through those challenges.

[00:16:03] Carra Sparks: Also, our fire guys would appreciate me saying, please don't overload the dryers.

They smoke, and I don't know if the clothes get ruined, but the fire department has to respond, and we see that a lot.

Also, watch your clothes as you're doing laundry. We've had clothes stolen right out of washing and drying machines, so that would really stink to lose your whole wardrobe.

[00:16:27] David Brinker: You made a great point. So the fire extinguisher hanging down from your ceiling in your room, that's not a clothesline. You know, you can't hang your shirts up on that.

[00:16:36] Heather Tinney: Also, don't do pull ups on the pipes in the Deacon.

[00:16:40] Carra Sparks: Don't hang decorations on the sprinkler system.

[00:16:42] Heather Tinney: Oh, yeah, yeah. Don't do pull ups on the pipes in the Deacon.

[00:16:46] Kelly Cantwell: And you all also talk about writing down serial numbers for your belongings, right?

[00:16:50] Carra Sparks: Yeah, anything of value. A laptop, a gaming system, your cell phone, any headphones, anything that's over a couple hundred dollars. I would keep track of the serial numbers in case they do get stolen. Most of the time, these things end up at pawn shops. So there is a chance, if you have your serial number, we could potentially get it back. So please keep track of your serial numbers.

[00:17:11] Heather Tinney: Are safes helpful?

[00:17:13] Kelly Cantwell: Don't save your serial numbers in your phone.

[00:17:15] Carra Sparks: Yeah, have them written down somewhere.

[00:17:17] Darryn Chenault: You said safes, like?

[00:17:18] Heather Tinney: Like safes in the room for putting stuff away in or?

[00:17:21] Darryn Chenault: Yeah, I would totally agree with a safe. Yeah. I mean, that just secures it even more. So. That's, that's always good.

[00:17:27] David Brinker: And the key is don't bring everything. You know, when you come here for the first time, they want to bring, like, their whole house with them. Right.

[00:17:32] Carra Sparks: Fish tanks.

[00:17:33] David Brinker: You don't need all this stuff. You know, just bring the bare, you know, the bare necessities. And then, you know, feel it out for a couple weeks and you'll figure out what you need and what you don't need, but you end up with all this property that you don't really need, then you just got to take it home.

[00:17:46] Heather Tinney: It's a lot to move. We always hit that, like, come with the minimum. There's a Target and a Kroger nearby, right. They can order Amazon right across the street. Anything that they don't have. You don't need to buy everything now.

[00:17:58] Darryn Chenault: That's right. Because once you move in, you got to move out.

[00:18:00] Heather Tinney: And we always show them the piles at the dumpsters of how much stuff gets left behind that never gets opened.

[00:18:09] Darryn Chenault: That's awesome. I appreciate it. I didn't know if you had another question or not, but.

[00:18:14] Heather Tinney: No, thank you, guys. This has been very informative. I've learned things. Like I said, I've been around UC for a long time, and I've learned things today I did not know before. I think my parents are going to really enjoy this.

[00:18:24] Darryn Chenault: Well, I want to thank, I definitely want to thank the Community Engagement team at the University of Cincinnati, and I also want to thank you for coming on today. It's been an honor to have you. Hopefully we can reach those parents and kind of get rid of some of that false sense of.

[00:18:41] Heather Tinney: Yeah.

[00:18:41] Darryn Chenault: That's going around with the parents, including myself. So obviously, thank you for helping us bridge that gap a little bit better.

[00:18:49] Kelly Cantwell: And I think maybe one of our biggest takeaways is we want to talk to parents. We want to engage with parents. We want to hear from you, we want to hear from your students.

So please don't hesitate to reach out to us. There are a lot of ways to reach out to us. Greg and Carra are great at talking to parents about their concerns. We have a public safety email.

We have a phone line. Talk to us.

[00:19:12] Heather Tinney: And I'll share all of those in our group. Keep them pinned.

[00:19:17] Darryn Chenault: Thank you.

[00:19:17] David Brinker: We appreciate that.

[00:19:18] Heather Tinney: Thank you.

[00:19:20] Darryn Chenault: And my mama would say we're done.

[00:19:45] Darryn Chenault: Thank you for joining us for part two.

[00:19:45] Kelly Cantwell: Hit subscribe to be notified when our next episode drops.

[00:19:48] Darryn Chenault: And we look forward to bridging the gap with you very soon. Have a great day.

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[00:00:00] Darryn Chenault: Hey. Hello. I am Police Officer Darren Chenault.

[00:00:03] Kelly Cantwell: And I'm Public Information Officer Kelly Cantwell. And we are the hosts of the University of Cincinnati Public Safety Department's podcast, Bridging the Gap.

[00:00:13] Darryn Chenault: Bridging the gap, indeed. Bridging the gap means furthering our connections with our community.

We hope that this podcast will be another way in which we can connect with you, the students, faculty, parents, and the community members so that we can share more about what we do and why we do it and learn more about our community needs.

[00:00:38] [Upbeat music]

[00:00:47] Darryn Chenault: So we're here. I'm glad to be here. We're here. Bridging the gap. I love that term, don't you, Kelly?

[00:00:54] Kelly Cantwell: I do.

[00:00:54] Darryn Chenault: Bridging the gap. Bridging the gap is between the University of Cincinnati Police Department and the UC community.

So we're thrilled to be here today with our first podcast. My host over here, Kelly Cantwell, Public Information Officer. I'm glad you're here to join us today.

[00:01:12] Kelly Cantwell: Absolutely. And you need to introduce yourself.

[00:01:15] Darryn Chenault: Obviously. Darryn Chenault. 20 years plus law enforcement with the University of Cincinnati. So great to be here. I'm joined by a crew today that I. Oh, I'm so proud of. I actually work with these guys, so. Community engagement, University of Cincinnati. Community engagement.

So I'm gonna let these guys introduce themselves, starting over here with Mr. Officer Valerius.

[00:01:40] Greg Valerius: Yeah, Officer Greg Valerius. I've been with UC for over 10 years now. Started out on patrol to eight years on night shift.

Got my master's degree while I was coming here to take advantage of the tuition, really like a lot of the benefits UC has to offer and, you know, the advantages we have working for such a big institution.

Spent our times at Blue Ash campus second shift patrol, and I've been in this assignment for the last year or so. Community engagement is a lot of community outreach, a lot of presentations, a lot of problem solving. We pretty much are the catch all the department. You know, wherever there's an issue, our office gets pretty busy.

[00:02:17] Carra Sparks: Carra Sparks.

I started here in 2009 as a security officer. I had just turned 19.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I just knew it paid a little bit more than I was currently making.

And it was retirement, full health benefits. And I text my dad and he said, apply ASAP. Free tuition.

So I've worked here 15 years now. I went to UC Clermont Police Academy in 2012, bumped up to full time police in 2014.

So I've been a police officer for over 10 years now, and I've been in community engagement for five years. I really just love our community meetings and giving presentations to our students, faculty, and staff and trying to educate everyone on how to be safe on and off campus.

[00:03:02] David Brinker: These guys, they really do a great job. So I'm David Brinker. I've been here for 21 years.

You know, when I was a kid, you know, some. Some officers, they dream they want to be an officer when they grow up. When I was growing up, I had really no idea what I wanted to do. You know, my biggest dream was being a garbage man. I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. Running around on the back of a garbage truck, throwing stuff in there. Back in the day, you had to pick it up and throw it in.

[00:03:23] Carra Sparks: I still want to do that now.

[00:03:23] David Brinker: It's all automatic.

[00:03:24] Carra Sparks: Yeah, I still want to do that.

[00:03:25] David Brinker: But I went to school and I actually got a degree in accounting and sitting behind a desk for, you know, a couple years, like, I don't know if I want to do this, you know, just doing a lot of, you know, numbers and paperwork. I was like, you know, I really want to get out and help people.

So I decided to go to the police academy. You know, I thought about fire service a little bit, but, man, you know, putting on that scva, too claustrophobic. That's not for me. I'd rather get shot at. But I'll never forget the day my dad was up cleaning the gutters. I was like, dad, I quit my job and I'm gonna go to the police academy. He's like, you did what?

So I went to the police academy.

Long story short, after some ins and outs, I ended up here. I've been here for 21 years.

I really like that analytical side. So I've done a lot of work in our investigative section at the time. Oversaw our investigative section. I really like that kind of puzzle work. Figuring things out and, you know, solving that puzzle and then helping people, you know, get their property back or, you know, helping them with whatever it is they want to accomplish.

But over the last couple years, I oversaw our community engagement unit. We did this big problem solving project with burglaries off campus. And with that, I got involved in community engagement side and really saw, like, the prevention. So really, in law enforcement, we want to try to prevent crime, not just respond to it. I really enjoyed that prevention piece, and I kind of got my foot in the door in community engagement. So here I am now.

[00:04:49] Darryn Chenault: That's awesome. Before I jump into my special, special guest today, I just want to make sure everybody knows that we're going to talk about safety on and off the campus. As a dad who has two daughters here at the university, that's been a big old concern of ours. So today I want to take the time to introduce our special guest, Ms. Heather Tenney. I'm going to let Heather talk about herself a little bit and shine that light on everything.

[00:05:18] Heather Tenney: Well, hi, I am Heather Tenney. I. I've been around UC in some form or another for about 25 years, either coming to hang out up here as a college kid myself, or my husband works here, or my kids go here.

And I run the UC Parents group on Facebook. We have about 10,000 parents who have students here at UC, and I hear a lot of what they're concerned about.

I hear a lot of what new parents are concerned about, what they want to know.

And I love this idea of getting together to figure out what we can do to prepare our students and what our students can be doing to be safer, what we as parents can do to help steward them as they make those transitions from being at home to being in college.

[00:06:07] Darryn Chenault: I tell you what, when I dropped my oldest off at campus here, I was so terrified.

And it's kind of. It's funny because I work down here in community engagement, so I kind of know what's going on. So today I have to play parent, fellas. I'm gonna jump out of this whole officer role, and I'll play parent.

What are you guys doing as far as community engagement to keep my two daughters safe, Officer Valerius?

[00:06:32] Greg Valerius: Put me on the spot right off the bat.

[00:06:36] Darryn Chenault: I'm gonna put you right on the spot because it's the only way to get it started.

[00:06:40] Greg Valerius: I mean, I think to talk about what we're doing, we have to acknowledge our difficulties, too. You know, as a police department, crime is going to evolve. You know, our complications are going to evolve. You know, technology is not what anyone imagined would be 10, 15 years ago.

On top of that, we're a campus police department, so our population changes every single year. And with that, you know, I feel like just like the professors and the staff, we have to educate the freshmen every year, try to get them up to speed, because they're coming from all walks of life. We have a very large, as your husband knows, international student base, and they're not even familiar. You know, forget about what Cincinnati is. What is the United States of America, you know, and where are the.

What. What's the sort of climate and. And way that they go about their everyday life around here? Because it's it's not the same as the Middle east or in Asia or wherever else you could be coming from. So that from there, from the get go, we are a, we have big hill to climb. My viewpoint.

So really one of the big things we do is we just try and be consistent. We try to be constantly improving, constantly trying to get out in front of it as best we can, but we don't always know what we're going to be faced with. A lot of times we get complaints from some neighborhood civilians that have nothing to do with uc, but they live in the area. And I tell them, I was like, you know, we try and get information out to our students about how to be good neighbors and that sort of thing, but. But we don't know what the problem house is gonna be till they're already a problem.

So it's like, how do you get out in front of that? How do you actually reach who is gonna be the issue ahead of time? If I knew that, I'd be making a lot more money doing something else. Right.

Because that would be the ultimate solution. So as far as what we do, we work with our community partners as much as we possibly can. There's not a meeting opportunity that we turn down as a community engagement unit. We, we are there everywhere we can be because we want people to know, first and foremost, reach out to us. We're here for you. So many people are timid to reach out to the police department. They think either wasting our time or they don't trust law enforcement or really they don't even know what we could do for them. They don't know what their rights are. And so really just building that bond from the get go and having them feel more like we're a resource for them is how I think our unit works to try to get out in front of the crime off campus.

[00:09:01] Darryn Chenault: That's awesome.

[00:09:03] David Brinker: Greg's making me proud. Couldn't say any better. Great job, Greg.

[00:09:06] Darryn Chenault: Ms. Tenney. I mean, what do you think and as far as your group goes, what are some of the concerns out there?

[00:09:13] Heather Tenney: I hear a lot about car break ins. Actually, I'm hearing a lot less this year about car break ins than we have in previous years. So whatever you guys have done to fix the gates and fix that has been amazing. But yeah, car break ins, we hear a lot. I hear a lot of questions about how safe is it to walk across campus late at night.

Right.

Is it safe to walk to raising canes at night?

And you know, there have been earlier in the year until it got really cold. There was, we heard a lot about some gun crime in the neighborhood. And so those are kinds of the things that I think our parents are most worried about.

How do they stop their kids from being victims and how do they stop their kids from being dumb? Because, you know, we all do dumb things when we're 18, 19, 20 years old, right?

[00:09:59] Kelly Cantwell: Absolutely.

[00:09:59] Heather Tenney: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:10:01] Carra Sparks: I'll hit on car break ins. The biggest thing that we tell our students whenever we get a chance to talk to a class of students, I talked to 30 yesterday in CCM.

If you have a car on campus or you live off campus and you park off campus, I should be able to look into your car and not see anything.

I don't want to see two quarters in a cup holder. I don't want to see a charging cord, an old pair of shoes on your backseat, a hoodie in your backseat. Because some of our local clientele, they could really use a hoodie.

If they're homeless or if they're an addict, that 50 cents could really help them out with whatever they're wanting to get. So don't make yourself an easy target.

Most of the time these bad guys will walk the street and they'll try door handles. So lock your car and then don't give them a reason to break the window to get into the car. And then once they're in your car, they go through the center console in the glove box looking for stuff. So keep as little amount of things in your car as possible.

[00:11:02] Heather Tenney: So a question that I've had, do dash cams help with that at all? Having a dash cam, does that prevent anything or do you see it not really effective?

[00:11:12] Carra Sparks: I'm not too familiar with dash cams. I don't have any, any knowledge on if that would prevent it. I would say probably not.

You know, especially if they're homeless or if they're an addict or if they're just a criminal. There's cameras everywhere. People don't care. Crime's still going to happen.

I think for a normal good citizen, they see a camera and they're like, oh, okay, good, that's nice. But the bad guys don't really care about cameras.

[00:11:39] Kelly Cantwell: So on that line, there are the things you shouldn't be doing. But what about like, are there any other products? I mean, there are steering wheel locks, but that's more for auto theft versus theft from autos, actually stealing a car. But is there anything parents can provide for their children if they're worried? Have you seen anything that's effective or is it more just Keeping your car clean and locked?

[00:12:02] Carra Sparks: Yeah, I don't think there's. Unless you know of something. I don't know of any products. I mean, I have tinted windows on my truck. They should be legal. But if that reduces the opportunity for the bad guy to look in and not see anything that could help you out.

But yeah, I think the biggest thing is just don't leave anything in plain view. Use the trunk, lock your door, and even the change in the cup holder, a charging cord, sunglasses on the dash, something like that.

They could easily sell something like that and get some cash.

[00:12:36] David Brinker: And the key here is opportunity. We want to take the opportunity away.

Greg, we had some videos recently for some off campus residents where they have like some ring doorbell cameras and it perfectly shows a bad guy walking up the driveway. As he's walking up, he's trying the door handles on the car. Right. He's looking for that opportunity to get in. This particular guy, he didn't want to create noise and attract himself by smashing a window, but he was looking for that opportunity just by.

So the biggest thing is to take that opportunity away. Don't have anything in the car. This is a constant battle for me with my kids and wife. You know, most cars today, a lot of the newer cars are a push button start, right. So what do people do? Just throw their keys in the cup holder or whatever. They get in, get out as they please. And I constantly preach to them, do not leave your keys in the car. And my daughter, she's young, she leaves her purse on the seat, gift cards laying around, and I try to tell her, please stop doing that. You know, as a dad, I'll take the stuff and I'll hide it for a day, see if she misses it. Half the time she doesn't even know I took it.

So it's a constant battle. But the key is education. And I like what you touched on earlier is prepare our students. So the key is try to educate them, prepare them as much as possible.

It's the old saying, you can take a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. Right. But we can just keep trying to educate them as best as we can and hopefully eventually it'll sink in.

[00:13:55] Darryn Chenault: We talked about some safety issues with walking at night.

What are some of the things we can do to walk at night? I know we talk about apps.

You see students have apps on their phones.

[00:14:06] Kelly Cantwell: Yeah, I can hit on that a little bit because I work a lot with our campus safety app. It's called Bearcat Guardian. We really try to push that out to students as much as possible and also parents to make them aware.

But that has a lot of really nice features. It has one that I think I would have used a lot as a college student. You know, my friends and I were always like, well, text me when you get back from the library. Because we would walk to our rooms at midnight or one in the morning.

And the Guardian app lets you select someone to watch you walk home. So it'll send them a text message. It can be anyone with a cell phone.

It'll send them a text message with a link. They can click on the link and then they can just watch you walk home. So a student can have their parent or their friend or anyone they want watching them walk home. It also lets you pick UC Police as a person that you can be notified.

And if you pick UC police, the police officers are not going to watch you walk home.

And I think generally, police speaking, students don't want that. But what it does do if you pick UC police is it notifies our dispatch if you don't turn off your safety timer in time. So they will get, if, if they're notified that you haven't turned off your safety timer, they get all your information from your Guardian profile. So I can't just go in and say, hey, this is Greg's phone number and he's currently using a timer. But if Greg's timer goes off because he didn't turn it off in time, I'm going to get his phone number and I'm going to get his safety profile information so I'll know if he has a medical condition that maybe our police officers should be aware of.

I'm going to know his local address. If he's filled that out, what his car looks like, you know, anything that he wants to provide, we would receive that. If he's not turning off his safety time or time.

So that's really nice because our officers get all that information before they respond. And our dispatcher can take that person's phone number and try to contact them. You know, maybe they just forgot to turn off their timer so they can try and contact them. But then we have an idea of where they might be because we would then have their location.

And it does remind you, the app reminds you to turn it off if you might have, like, gotten home and just kind of forgotten about it. But if, you know, if your daughter or your son picked you as the guardian, it would text you and tell you that they hadn't turned off their timer in time.

[00:16:40] Heather Tenney: Well, and I think that's. I didn't know that it had that feature. I think that's a brilliant idea.

Life360 is so popular amongst college students. They watch each other as they go places. I didn't know the Bearcat Guardian app did that. And also having a chance child on the spectrum. Right. And I know a lot of our parents have children on the spectrum or neurodivergent or anxious that having that feature where they know somebody is keeping track of them for that time and can call and check in. I think that's a really brilliant feature. I love that you guys do that. I didn't know that.

[00:17:14] Kelly Cantwell: Yeah.

Other thing that I really love about the app is it lets you have a conversation with UC police.

You know, it's. It can be hard to get a college student to make a phone call or someone might be in a situation where they cannot make a phone call, where they might escalate the situation that they're in by making a phone call.

So you can send UC police a message and it will go right into our dispatch center. It makes this obnoxious blaring noise on their computer. Like, there's no way our dispatcher is not going to know that your message just came through.

And it allows you to share your location in that message. It allows you to send pictures or videos in that message. So you can be providing us with all this information in real time. And it has an anonymous feature. So if someone is concerned, I mean, we always ask people to not use that if at all possible. But if the option is don't give us information or turn on anonymous, we would like the information.

So it has that feature too to allow people to share things with us. And we have had a couple situations where our dispatchers have received awards from the company that we use for this app because of how they've handled situations with that chat feature where they've been able to get help to students who have needed it through using that chat. You know, students who were in moments of crisis, they were able to get that help without escalating the. The situation. Because of that chat feature.

[00:18:43] Darryn Chenault: It sounds like we're doing a lot to protect our kids.

I'm impressed. I'm impressed.

Ms. Tenney, do you have any other questions?

[00:18:54] Heather Tenney: I think that. So one of the big questions we have in our group often is where is your jurisdiction in. So, for example, we have a rule in our group that we only allow published reports or UC reports when we talk about crime. But I had a parent contact me just two days ago. About a attempted break in at VP3 and they weren't sure whether to call UC Police or whether to call Cincinnati police on that.

[00:19:23] Darryn Chenault: My daughter stays in VP3. Hopefully that wasn't my wife calling.

I'm sure Lt. Brinker can probably address that.

[00:19:30] David Brinker: Yeah, that's a great question. We get that all the time. So our jurisdiction is university owned property.

[00:19:35] Heather Tenney: Okay.

[00:19:35] David Brinker: But it gets muddy because university right now there's a housing shortage on campus. So the university, we put students out in what's called block leases in apartments and different facilities just off campus.

So in that case, say VP3. And I don't know if we currently have a block lease of VP3 or not, but say the university puts Greg and Carra in an apartment in VP3 as part of a block lease. Technically they're off campus, but UC play. So that causes even more confusion. So I'll be calling UC police. Should I call some society police? You know, the biggest thing we say is if it's an emergency, you just call 911. Right? Call 911. And all you have to worry about is, you know, we're going to get resources to you and you don't care where it's coming from, whether it's Cincinnati or UC police, resources will get to you.

If it's a non emergency, say you know, you had your walk out to your car in the garage. Next thing you know you see the window bus there. Right. If you're unsure, I always advocate call UC police. You know, because we want to really pride ourselves on being resourceful for our students, faculty and staff. So call us and we can make that determination if it's our primary jurisdiction or not. And if it's not, we'll stay there with you. Call Cincinnati police, ask them to come over and get you the resources to help you out. So the number one thing is call 911 if it's an emergency. If you're unsure, call UC Police and we can help navigate that for you and help get you the resource that does come up a lot. So just on campus, again, our jurisdiction is your university owned property, but we have a lot of students that live just off campus and it's an area that we call our CSR. Have you ever heard that term before?

So the CSR stands for concentration of student residents. So many years ago the university did a survey and realized that, hey, you know, just off campus on Wheeler or Stratford Chickasaw, just be a short vine area.

We have a lot of kids that live in that area. Right, but technically it's not University owned property. But we have students living there, so we have a vested interest to make sure you know they're safe and be resourceful and help them out. So we created the CSR, which is don't hold me to the numbers here, but about a two mile radius around campus where we know there's a large concentration of students that live and in that area we tried to provide as much resources as possible to help serve those students.

Was you aware of that, Darryn?

[00:21:49] Darryn Chenault: I was a little bit.

Not so much in detail like that.

Remember, I'm new to the unit. No, that's awesome.

[00:21:56] David Brinker: Want to make those dads out there, you know, the goal is to inform those dads and make sure you have all the information.

[00:22:02] Darryn Chenault: I guess we're doing all right with our kids, huh?

[00:22:04] Heather Tenney: We're doing all right.

[00:22:05] Greg Valerius: I always push my presentations. Just because it's not our jurisdiction doesn't mean we don't care.

So you know, that's where, especially on seconds and third shift, that's where officers are patrolling. A lot of times we're driving around, we're actually have eyes and ears. If something's happening in that moment, 100% we're going to interfere. We're going to stop that crime from happening. We have mutual aid agreements with City of Cincinnati. We can make that stop. We can hold it and figure it out with our city partners. But we do a lot of community stuff off campus. We do a lot of flyer events, get information out there.

I've had landlords reach out to me. It's like saying, hey, I have some issues with my house. House. Tips for how the bear is cured. Better to work with the students to make sure they're not going to be victimized as much.

We've been involved in site planning and like a local church that's being redeveloped in Corryville, we're off campus a lot more people realize campus is always going to be our primary concern, of course, but our community is off campus, so we have to be out there. I don't want people to think that. Just because it's not our jurisdiction doesn't mean it's not our priority.

[00:23:06] Darryn Chenault: As a dad, do you guys often collaborate with the university and. Sorry, Cincinnati PD, 100%.

[00:23:14] Greg Valerius: I mean all of our officers have a number of Cincinnati officers personal cell phone numbers in their phones. We text each other constantly. We hang out outside of work. We work on projects all the time. I have a number of friends in that department.

There's a very strong bond between our officers and their officers. It's not this Strict wall where we won't talk or socialize with the other department.

[00:23:36] Heather Tenney: Well, and I just want to say that I know that, you know, warmer months bring higher crime rates. Right. And my kids noticed that when the crime was a little bit higher, they noticed your all's presence come up. They told me they noticed yours and Cincinnati police patrolling the Wheeler McMillan area a lot more. They said it was almost four times more from what they were used to. So they noticed that they noticed you guys recognizing that.

[00:24:00] Kelly Cantwell: So maybe someone could talk a little bit about how we use data and directive patrols.

[00:24:06] David Brinker: Sure. Carra, you good or you want me to go with it?

[00:24:08] Carra Sparks: I think that's a lieutenant talking.

[00:24:11] Darryn Chenault: That's the way to do that one.

[00:24:13] David Brinker: All right, I appreciate, Appreciate that.

[00:24:15] Darryn Chenault: Team makes the dream work right there.

[00:24:18] David Brinker: So, Heather, at the university, we collaborate very frequently with the city of Cincinnati.

So if you weren't aware or for our listeners out there that aren't aware, we have a monthly meeting called crime reduction. Have you ever heard of a crime reduction meeting?

[00:24:29] Heather Tenney: None of that one.

[00:24:30] David Brinker: So we have a monthly meeting with the Cincinnati Police Department. We actually just added earlier this week, Kelly. Right. Where we have the two districts that border UC, so we have District 4 and District 1. We have people from their command staff, from their investigative units, from their neighborhood liaison unit come to our department, and we actually go over all the crime data. So here at the University of Cincinnati, we have a crime analyst, and she looks at all the crime data and she provides us all the number to keep us abreast of what's going on, what the issues are, what could be trending, what's going down, so we can adjust our resources accordingly.

So based upon crime trends, we'll allocate those resources accordingly. So here at the University of Cincinnati, we actually contract with the city of Cincinnati to provide additional patrols in the areas based upon what's on, going, going on. So if we notice an uptick of vehicles being broken into or houses being broken into or whatever it is, we'll try to adjust those resources accordingly to provide some visibility. Because the key is we want to prevent crime from happening to begin with. So the key is to provide those what we call visibility patrols in the area. So hopefully it'll, you know, keep the bad guys or bad gals from doing things that are, you know, shouldn't be done and keep them from committing those crimes that begin with. So really pride herself on being data driven, looking at the data, looking at the trends to see what's going on, then adjusting our resources accordingly to try to prevent that crime from happening to begin with. Now, we gotta be realistic. We're all human beings, you know, we're living in a real world. So stuff's gonna happen, right? The crime's not gonna go away? Ideally, yeah, it would be nice to have no crime. But unfortunately, things happen. There is gonna be crime no matter where you're at in the world.

But the key is to try to be preventative as much as possible and look at that data and allocate resources accordingly to prevent things from happening.

[00:26:14] [Upbeat music]

[00:26:20] Kelly Cantwell: Thank you for listening to part one of our conversation with Heather Tenney. Head to our channel to hear part two.

[00:26:26] Darryn Chenault: Bridging the Gap.

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[00:00:00] Darryn Chenault: Safety matters, whether you are a University of Cincinnati student, parent or employee.

[00:00:05] Kelly Cantwell: Ever wonder what UC Public Safety does to protect our campus?

[00:00:09] Darryn Chenault: Or how you can stay ahead of potential risks? Join us each month for Bridging the Gap, the podcast that connects you to the people, programs, and tips that keep UC safe.

[00:00:21] Kelly Cantwell: Stay informed, stay prepared. Listen now at uc.edu/publicsafety or find Bridging the Gap wherever you stream your podcasts.