BYU NewsNet - Keeping peace and order

By G.VISHWESHWARAN

Many students at BYU believe the BYU police department doesn’t have much to do. What most students don’t realize, however, is that the BYU police department is one of the most active departments of its kind in the nation.

“We are a fully functioning sworn police department,” said Lt. Arnold Lemmon of the BYU police. “We have 27 sworn officers. We have another seven reserve, certified police officers, who are police officers from other jurisdictions who work for us part time.”

According to the Salt Lake City Police Department’s Web site, a sworn police officer is a certified member of the police force who “performs a wide variety of police functions, including but not limited to: crime suppression, crime prevention, protection of personal liberties, regulation of non-criminal conduct and provision of services.”

The BYU police department is divided into the patrol division, which is in charge of patrol cars and filing of reports; the detective division, which is in charge of follow up investigations on filed complaints; and the support services division, which deals with communications, including 911 calls.

The HBLL, the Museum of Art, the MTC and the Motion Picture Studio are monitored by the security satellite operations and patrolled by the police security division. The parking division supervises the parking on and around campus.

“We have a six million dollar security system on campus,” Lt. Lemmon said. “That’s cameras, door sensors, card readers, emergency phones, mass notification system and the list goes on and on.”

The BYU police department also employees about 125 students as security guards, dispatchers, and office staff.

“Our student employees are put through a 30 hour training program in which they learn everything from verbal skills to responding to major crime scenes to CPR. All of our students are civilian security or parking officers.”

The BYU police department began in 1950 when the campus maintenance personnel issued tickets in their spare time. Then BYU had only 5,000 students and no buildings north of the Brimhall building. In 1952, a retired, LDS, Los Angeles police detective was hired to solve a series of thefts from the new George Albert Smith Fieldhouse after grounds personnel fished 25 wallets from the botany pond.

The department has come a long way from the days when the officers would carry only one army surplus revolver, which was passed on from one shift to the next. Now the “department personnel utilize the finest equipment the profession has to offer and use it based on a level of training and expertise that is second to none.”

According to Lt. Lemmon, the average combined experience on the BYU workforce is about 20 years per officer.

“Compared to other universities our size, we run one third less sworn officers because we don’t have the drug and alcohol problem which is the major issue in many other universities,” he said.