Wichita State to hire more police officers, conducts meeting on campus safety

Wichita State University plans to hire four more campus police officers after increased safety concerns on campus.

About 30 students showed up at a town hall meeting about campus safety Monday evening.

Most who spoke appeared to be in leadership positions with student government and other organizations. The conversation frequently steered toward the university’s gun policies and the future of gun control on campus.

The WSU Police Department now employs 28 officers. Sara Morris, university police chief, said the department would hire the four new officers in an expedited hiring process – the first time since she started 10 years ago.

Typically, she said, officers complete a 14-week academy followed by eight weeks of field training. The expedited hiring will allow the department to put officers in the eight-week field training before they attend the academy to more quickly pair them with experienced officers, she said. The new hires will attend the academy later.

Morris said the new officers will not carry a gun until they complete range qualification. She said the officers would go to range training and classroom training during the eight weeks of field training.

The new hires will undergo physical, psychological and criminal background checks and will be hired on a contingent basis. Morris estimated the four new officers would cost around $240,000 in salary and benefits.

WSU Student Government Association organized Monday’s event. The university will hold two more events about campus safety this week: a partnered meeting with the Fairmount Park Association from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday and a safety walk around campus at 8:15 p.m. Thursday.

A student questioned why WSU did not release a safety warning about a suspicious van over the last week. Joseph Shepard, student body president for WSU, notified students about the incident on Facebook. Police talked with the owner of the van and determined it was people trying to get students to join a Bible study.

At the Monday event, Morris said the university did not issue a warning because even though the incident was uncomfortable, it did not amount to illegal activity.

The campus has had a quick succession of widely publicized crimes.

In August, a 23-year old man was killed in the parking lot of Fairmount Towers, where he lived. Police arrested two suspects in the case.

The university also has had two robberies in the last month and a half, including one in which a man was held at gunpoint.

Matthew Brinkmeyer, a WSU student and chairman of the campus issues committee, raised concern about the warning timeliness for one of the robberies.

“If I would have been walking in that area, I would not have known until two hours later,” he said.

In November, a man attacked, raped and burned a 36-year-old woman in Fairmount Park south of campus. She died several days later.

Morris said the hiring of the four new officers is not related to any one specific event.

In an attempt to address student insecurity, the university started sending police officers on foot a week ago to talk with students about their safety concerns. University officials said they hope to expand that service with the added four officers and receive more student feedback.

Anyone with campus safety ideas can submit suggestions at www.wichita.edu/safetyfeedback.

Students can call university police at 316-978-3450 to report an incident, if they sense danger or need an escort somewhere on campus. The police department urges students to save the number in their phones.

This story was originally published September 14, 2015 at 10:04 PM with the headline "Wichita State to hire more police officers, conducts meeting on campus safety."