The chaos in Columbus, Ohio early Monday morning was a clear reminder to Town of Elon Police Chief Cliff Parkeras to why his staff and the Elon University Police Department rely heavily on each other.
In the early stages of the Ohio State University attack that killed one and left seven others hospitalized, both the university and Columbus police departments acted swiftly, throwing away jurisdiction requirements and worked together to solve the problem. Because of the severity of the incident, other agencies were called — including the FBI. Parker said if a similar situation were to happen on Elon's campus, an identical approach would be taken.
“More than likely if we were to get a call about an active shooter, there would be a response from multiple agencies,” Parker said. “But in terms of an initial response right here, we would absolutely respond to the campus to support the campus police and vice versa.”
Parker admitted that an active shooter is “a worse case scenario,” but on a weekly basis, the Town of Elon Police and the university police collaborate regularly. Though the university police jurisdiction is the campus and the Town of Elon jurisdiction is everywhere else, the two organizations share a radio and constantly assist each other on calls when officers are busy. During Homecoming weekend, multiple Town of Elon police reports said their deputies aided the university police because of the high rate of activity.
But while they both assist each other, they also respect each other enough to carry out their jobs. Because campus police work directly with the Office of Student Conduct, Parker said his team generally doesn’t deal with student affairs. When needed, campus police can access information through Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act and other privacy laws that can’t be disseminated to anyone else. Likewise, campus police normally wouldn’t deal with minor domestic disputes or civil matters. Parker said because each department is accustomed to their distinctive groups — campus police being college students and Town of Elon Police being normally older adults — they will not overstep their boundaries. Parker said each department has its own goals and missions and they don’t want to interfere with that.
“We have different departments that we work in and our customer service to tailored to our specific communities,” Parker said.
Parker said with bigger crimes, if something involves both the town and the university, that they would work together after they find the common thread. The police chief used a stolen laptop as an example, saying that would be handled by campus police, but if another item was stolen in the town, detectives from both agencies would pitch in during the investigation.
“I call it ‘force multiplication,’ so that if our officers need assistance, we have immediate assistance from our partners, including for joint investigations,” Parker said.
Parker said the relationship both organizations have is strong — something not commonplace in other cities. He works closely with Elon's Director of Campus Safety and Police Chief Dennis Franks and has meetings with him almost every week. Because of this, he thinks he and his staff are primed to continue working well with campus police because they get along.
“Their staff and our staff are friends,” Parker said. “We know each other and we work with each other because we have common interests. Personally, I feel like the relationship we have is excellent. To be realistic, that’s not going to be reflective across the country. They’ll do what the law requires, but they don’t have good personal relationships. In my opinion, that is not effective because you have to like each other in order to work well.”