SRJC Petaluma campus faculty and staff are voicing concerns about the lack of police presence on the campus after an April 2014 incident in which a faculty member had to wait 45 minutes for District Police to arrive to control an aggressive and unruly student who had refused to leave the classroom.
SRJC English professor Johnny Sarraf said he called District Police to report a disruptive student who had ignored his standing suspension from the class. During the 45-minute wait, the student became extremely agitated and violated the professor’s personal space, attempting to grab a test out of Sarraf’s hands. Other students in the class had to wait while the incident was taking place. The student fled the classroom before police arrived.
Petaluma faculty addressed the concerns of a minimal police presence at a Faculty Forum meeting in late April attended by District Police Chief Matt McCaffrey and SRJC President Dr. Frank Chong.
During the meeting Dr. Chong agreed with the faculty that safety should come first, Sarraf said.
Around two dozen faculty who felt the chief had dismissed their concerns wrote a letter to Dr. Chong and signed a petition requesting that he address the sense of insecurity due to the lack of police presence on the Petaluma campus. In the letter, several faculty expressed grave concerns about the situation.
“The message seems to be that each of us will need to fend for himself/herself if an emergency should occur,” wrote SRJC history professor Dr. Allison Baker.
SRJC biology professor Dr. Kirstin Swinstrom wrote, “I no longer feel safe calling on the SRJC police and would call 911 instead.”
Dr. Chong said he will not directly address these concerns, but instead relied on Chief McCaffrey and the Vice President of the Petaluma campus Jane Saldaña-Talley to solve the situation.
“The police were where they needed to be when they needed to be there,” Saldaña-Talley said. She recalled a later incident during which the police were waiting for the student as he tried to re-enter the classroom. A 15-minute struggle with the police ensued, and the student was arrested.
Chief McCaffrey reassigned Lieutenant Dave Willat, second-ranking officer in the department, to the Petaluma Campus to address the faculty’s concerns and to avoid redundancy at the Santa Rosa department.
Lt. Willat declined to comment and instead referred questions to Dr. Chong or Doug Roberts, vice president of business affairs.
Lt. Willat is on duty from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. as the only sworn officer who patrols the Petaluma campus. Two unarmed Community Service Officers (CSO) also patrol the campus, but lack arrest powers and are limited in what services they can provide.
Julia McDermott-Swanson, adjunct professor of communication studies at the Petaluma campus and one of the original signatories to the letter and petition to Dr. Chong, said the changes have only made the campus safer for a limited number of hours.
“I’m not sure we’re at a point yet where I believe that the safety of faculty and students who are on campus after regular business hours is really being taken seriously by the District Police,” she said in an email interview.
Sarraf said, “We need someone beyond the 4 o’clock shift. Until they do hire someone, it is essential to send one of the five or six officers they have at the Santa Rosa campus.” He added that decisions should be more democratic and transparent. “This idea of all the authority going to one person is a problem. When the chief is making all the decisions, there has to be some accountability,” he said.
Chief McCaffrey said calls for service drive staffing decisions. Sending officers to the Petaluma campus when there are considerably fewer calls is inefficient when they may be needed in Santa Rosa.
The chief added the department is in the middle of recruiting an officer or officers on a short-term, non-continuing basis to cover the evening shifts, but could not give an estimation of when those officers would be on campus.
The lack of a marked police car available on the campus after 4 p.m. has prompted CSOs to file a grievance with Human Resources. They cite an agreement with the department to provide the CSOs with the necessary equipment to do their jobs. McCaffrey said his department is aware of this issue and plans to address it by providing a decommissioned patrol vehicle from the Santa Rosa fleet.