Changing force

Jace Radke

Monday, July 17, 2000 | 11:08 a.m.

When Jose Elique was named UNLV's new director of public safety in May, the news of his hire made its way to Mike Murray, a retired New York Port Authority lieutenant and former colleague of Elique who lives in Las Vegas.

Murray gave his old port authority boss a call and ultimately was talked into helping Elique reinvent UNLV's police force.

"He didn't want to do it at first," Elique said of Murray, who now serves as interim deputy director for the UNLV police department. "He'd been out here learning how to fly planes, so I asked him if he was tired of flying around the mountains and ready to go back to work."

Murray's presence is one of the changes that Elique has made since taking over the 22-officer force six weeks ago, as he works to close the rift that has developed between police and the rest of the university community.

"I expect to see some discernible changes in the way people view the department, and I've already started to get unsolicited comments from people saying they wave to the officers and are seeing them on campus more," Elique said. "Clearly that rift still exists from people on both sides, but we're going to be doing a lot of outreach and changing the culture of the department to one of community policing.

"Policing a college campus is a different kind of policing than what is done on the streets of a metropolitan area. It doesn't mean we throw up our hands and never arrest anyone, but that's a last resort, because we try to work out problems through talking and other avenues."

Elique speaks from experience when he endorses a community policing model for UNLV. He spent nine years as head of a 700-officer police force at the City University of New York's 21 campuses.

Before that he spent 21 years with the port authority, where he was the second highest ranking uniformed officer. Murray managed New York's waterfront, handling incoming passenger ships before retiring six years ago.

"Mike fills a big hole in middle management here," Elique said. "Before there was just the chief and then a drop to the first-line supervisors. Now we have a captain that the sergeants can report to."

A national search for the captain position will be conducted, but until then Murray will be handling the job. Elique is also hoping to hire two more officers by early next year.

The department's six sergeants are being assigned specific officers to supervise, so that each will have a squad to work with daily and take responsibility for. The department also has 30 to 40 reserve officers, made up of employees of other law enforcement agencies and others who meet the standards required to be university officers.

"I'll working to identify a core group of reserves who can not only help us for events at Thomas & Mack, but also fill in on regular shifts when we're short-handed or need the extra manpower," Elique said. "We're in the process of interviewing each of the reserves, and part of that includes making sure they understand what kind of policing we're doing here."

Students and faculty will be seeing more bicycle officers, as well as police paying more attention to what is happening inside the university's nearly 350-acre campus and less to what is happening outside.

"In the past there was a lot of time spent on the perimeter with the philosophy of keeping the bad things off campus," Elique said. "But we're changing that mind-set and working for a greater public safety presence on the entire campus."

The change in philosophy is a welcome one, said Joey Cohn, a former student representative on UNLV's Public Safety Advisory Board, and the founder of the university's student American Civil Liberties Union.

"I think that Elique's ideas are good ones with the potential to solve some of the problems facing the department and the university," Cohn said. "Certainly it will take some time to ease the student's concerns about the department, but I think this is a very healthy beginning for the new leadership."

To help develop a better relationship with students and the entire university community, communication and notification will be emphasized by the department, Elique said.

If someone files a complaint against an officer, the person will get a call from Elique or Murray within 24 hours. After that the complainant will be contacted every 10 days and given a progress report. Once the investigation is complete, the complainant can expect another call with the result, Elique said.

"I believe strongly in notification, and if something happens, a sergeant will call the captain, who'll call me," Elique said. "We'll also notify the university president and my other bosses."

Such communication was not handled well during a March 9 dormitory drug raid that is still under investigation by the Nevada Division of Investigations.

A campus housing coordinator filed a complaint alleging that officers dressed in full SWAT gear handcuffed and frisked many students after kicking in the doors to six dorm rooms during the raid. Former acting chief Sgt. Don Drake and Sgt. Paul Harris were suspended.

Drake and Harris were reinstated in April but have not been restored to their full authority pending the outcome of the investigation, which has yet to be turned over to the university, UNLV Vice President of Student Affairs Rebecca Mills said.

For the forward-looking Elique, the still-open investigation has become a link to the department's past that he would like to close.

"It's a little frustrating to me, and is an added burden to the sergeants," Elique said. "It basically ties up 33 percent of my supervisory force, because I'm reluctant to restore their full supervisory status until the investigation is completed.

"The fact that the report has taken so long doesn't give you a warm, fuzzy feeling, but when we get it we'll look at the whole package in the context of what rules if any were violated, and what rules existed at that time."

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