LAW & ORDER AT HAVERFORD, PART 1

Tom King's Daily Rounds

Nora Nelle, Tom King, and Mark Sweeney

Orientation

The rain has finally stopped. Day after Labor Day. Squooshy-squoosh, sloc-squoosh. People slogging down Coursey Road toward Whitehead, their Nikes sloggering the puddles like little amphibious landing craft. New teachers moving up to 205-B, above the Coop, for orientation talks on how to cope with the campus. Cheryl Cephas, the ebullient associate director of human resources, explaining the mysteries of TIAA/CREF and the new carrier for disability insurance to the serious-looking rookies: “Ooh,” one downy-faced assistant professor, just out of grad school, says. “You mean I get two checks at the end of September?!” (He’d done some summer work.) “Yeaah!” Cheryl laughs. "You get two!”

When Cheryl finishes, Tom King—Director of Safety and Security for the last six years; a veteran ramrod, 5'8", 160 lbs.; demon bicyclist (120 miles per weekend); former runner and amateur boxer (he has Muhammad Ali’s framed photo on the wall of his branché new office in the Doug B. Gardner Integrated Athletic Center)—blows into the room, like a wind off Johnson Track. He has the wiry Irish thing going on, Bobby Kennedy before his brother died, but with none of the ruthlessness. Nose is flattened a little, from taking shots. But King’s face, at 50, is still youngish (“When I fought for the Temple Boxing Team, they called me ‘the baby-faced killer’—that was because I fought scared—bap-bap-bap—very fast, didn’t want them to hit me!”)

He bounces. He flexes his jaw muscles. The other males in the room look like teddy bears by comparison. This guy was a cop. Twenty years with Philly P.D., first as an officer, then Detective Sgt., then as liaison group supervisor for a firearms trafficking taskforce with the ATF (federal bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms)...and finally as an assistant chief in the University of Pennsylvania’s Safety & Security division. He cuts to the chase:

“Parking, parking, and more parking!” he tells the new teachers. “The biggest problems at Haverford. People tend to want to be in parking spaces on the north end of the campus—around Founders, the Gest Center, Magill, Stokes, Chase, Lloyd, Roberts... You know, those nice parking spaces under the trees, there? Have you seen them yet?...No? You will. Plenty of good spaces on the South Parking Lot ...On Walton near the Observatory, and that’s technically north...What can you say? Some faculty don’t think students—who make up maybe a third of the parkees—is that the right word, Lombardi?— should be allowed to have cars at all on a campus this small! Some of the students feel the teachers are hogging all the spaces! And—young as they are—some object to walking up to, say, the Koshland Science Center from South Parking, because it’s uphill!” He spreads his arms at the implied injustice, and the rookies crack up.

“Fortunately, I have Nora Nelle, associate director, to deal with this great concern.” King winks. “And I have Mark Sweeney, another associate director, to deal with safety—factors like fire and construction problems...” He looks around the room.

“But other stuff? We have the occasional computer or bike theft. A freshman reported a laptop and iPod stolen this weekend, but it turned out she’d let a stranger into her building [Haverford College Apartments, on the southwest end of the campus], past card access, trying to be nice ...He ‘looked like a student,’ she said, and then she forgot to lock her room. Since John Castrege [security systems administrator] inaugurated [the keyless] card access system, though [for outside door entry], thefts have dropped to nearly nothing.

Tom with his son, Mike, who worked on campus a few summers ago

“I used to run in this area when I was a kid [with his father Bill King and the Haverford Running Club], so I kind of idealized the place. And when I was with security at U of P, and we had occasion to come out this way, I’d look at the campus and say: ‘Boy—God’s country’ ...Penn is in the city and there’s a lot more opportunistic street crime there. So you’ll be pretty safe on campus,” he winks again, reassuring the newbies. “A few alcohol poisonings, some fights ...But now we’ve got the ‘Quaker Bouncers’, student volunteers who voluntarily keep an eye on what’s going on at weekend parties, intervene gently when they have to, and let us know if things are getting out of hand...

“You should also know about our [51 blue light emergency] phone boxes around the campus. If you’re ever having trouble of any kind, you just pick up the phones—you don’t even have to dial—and you’re automatically connected to Security. We hone right in on you, and can even tell your location ...very efficient...

“Let’s see—other trouble spots? Well, there’s the West End squirrel problem, the snapping turtles in the duck pond—we won’t even go there!” He breaks himself up. “Any questions? Why isn’t the main gate inside the College entrance [College Lane] on Lancaster Ave. manned? It’s only necessary on heavy party weekends. To keep questionable non-students out. But no, we’re not exclusionary. We cooperate and request...

“Any more questions? No? Well, we’re always available, 23 officers, 20 full-time, 24-7. Call us anytime—610-896-1111. We’re user-friendly...”

Patrol

I’m on a ride-along with Corporal Brian Murray, checking out the regular campus loop in his van, known affectionately as the LRT (Little Red Truck), one of several patrols (supplemented by bikes), by which Safety and Security makes sure Haverford remains virtually crime free. Murray, who spent some time as a Lower Merion P.D. officer, has been here for 10 years and likes the more relaxed atmosphere of campus work...“You get to know the dogwalkers, who are often neighbors living around Haverford, but who feel free to use the campus,” plus the joggers, students, cleaning staff, faculty...“And a lot of Security staff relate to the students, ‘cause we have college or high school-age kids ourselves...”

It takes no more than 20 minutes to “do a loop” from the North End to the South, and from the College Lane entrance off Lancaster Avenue to the Ardmore Avenue border of the Haverford College Apartments ...the closest we come to “trouble” is an old lady feeding bread to the ducks by the pond, within view of the president’s house...“See now, she isn’t supposed to do that. I mean we don’t want to encourage the Canada geese or anything” ...but she seems like such a nice lady that Corporal Murray figures he’ll give her a chance to leave on her own, so he starts another loop.

Brian Bell and Brian Murray

“The late shifts—4 to 12 and 12 to 6—are the most exciting. Especially on the weekends, when you have the heavy party schedule—these kids get down. You mostly get noise complaints—people will report loud music and laughing and fighting, which happens once in a while. You give ‘em up to three warnings, and then you call Lower Merion or Haverford P.D. We don’t have any arrest power ...But mostly we just try to talk ‘em down, get ‘em to be reasonable ...The students are really good most of the time. I mean they know we aren’t going to turn them in for drinking too much, or smoking or anything—unless they force us to...They’re all so brainy, they figure it out pretty well on their own.”

Cpl. Murray remembers one occasion when he actually got into a wrestling match with an inebriated party visitor on the lawn in front of a house on College Lane. Haverford students, including Quaker Bouncers, had called in—“They [students] trust us now, which wasn’t always the case” —and he’d tried to reason with the kid, but actually had to pin him down, while the real cops were called...

“But really, I can only remember that one time. It isn’t hard duty here...” Murray wheels by the Duck Pond again, to check on the goose feeder. Sure enough, she’s still scattering bread. He parks quietly nearby, so as not to startle her, then walks up behind her, clearing his throat. He’s very friendly, but firm: “I didn’t know it was against the rules, “ she says contritely. “I’m sorry, officer.” “It’s all right, ma’am,” he grins.

*

Another crucial part of patrol is technical. From the vestibule area in Gardner, at least one officer is always scanning closed-circuit camera links to 14 points around the College—all the dorm entrances, for example, and even some remote locations, like Featherbed Lane. Because of their exposure to off-campus intruders, the Haverford College Apartments had been more vulnerable than other dorm sites, until two years ago, when Tom King brought in closed circuit TV surveillance: He remembers at Thanksgiving of 2004, shortly after installation, two individuals were spotted under a window at the HCA, where they shouldn’t have been. The police were called, and they were arrested.

Tom, on left throwing the right hand punch, in his college boxing days

King points out that the windows of the students’ rooms are electronically blacked out, for privacy’s sake: His monitors can only see people in exterior positions. Before this, the bad guys figured they could find ways to pop the windows or doors without being noticed: “Message to students,” he quips. “It’s only a tool. Nobody wants to spy on you...”

Because of different attitudes in earlier years, students used to be less trusting of Safety and Security. “There were certain officers here who weren’t as ‘user friendly’ as we try to be now...Somebody might call up and say, ‘Hey, my car broke down on Roosevelt Blvd.’ And the officer would answer: ‘Yeah? You got Triple A? Why’ncha call ‘em?’ ”

There was still an “authoritarian” attitude on the part of some security officers, partly a function of earlier mindsets by older men (many of whom were retired police), complicated by liberal student attitudes toward law enforcement. “I think some of it was left-over from '60s and '70s ideas, where cops were always seen as the agents of repression, or something,” King says. “I mean, students today are more sophisticated, they don’t have that ‘us and them’ worldview. So gradually, through talking to them, through teaching them the signs of alcohol poisoning, to use one practical instance—paleness, clamminess, collapse, unresponsiveness, slow pulse—we’ve educated them to the point where they know when something’s really wrong, and they’ll call us, or call 911 for an ambulance...[Haverford P.D. is 610-853-2400; Lower Merion is 610-642-4200.] It took a while [of weeding out], but our guys now are all pretty much accepted, and are seen as helpers—all trained in first aid, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, AED [automated external defibrillation—where you ‘jumpstart’ the heart with electronic charge pads], and we offer a RAD [rape aggression defense] training course—date rape and forced sex are still among the most under-reported incidents at many colleges and universities...” [On Haverford’s campus, forced sex offenses, all closer to ‘date rape’ than the more grisly act, happened five times in 2003, four times in 2004, and once in 2005, the latest year for statistics; likewise, there were two robberies on campus in 2003, and none in 2004-5; 18 burglaries in 2003, 19 in 2004, and three in 2005—the most frequently-committed crime; there were 33 liquor law violations, though only 6 arrests in 2003; 31 LLV’s in 2004, but 22 arrests; and 27 LLV’s in 2005, though arrests were down to 16. Drug violations were two in 2003, 12 in 2004—a rougher year on all fronts, for some reason—and down to four again in 2005; drug arrests totaled zero, one, and two for the three-year span. The overwhelming number of DV’s were minor “grass” incidents. No illegal weapons charges. No murders. No manslaughter. One probable suicide.]

—John Lombardi

*for Steve Heacock

Part 2 of Law & Order at Haverford will appear in next month’s e-newsletter.