On a Saturday night earlier this quarter, two policemen in different uniforms walked into the Athens Police Department.
Red-nosed from the cold, smiling from victory, the two escorted their drunken college student to the interrogation room.
After processing the young man and finding someone to take him home, they remind him again that showing your genitalia to the entire bar is frowned upon in this city.
Just another Saturday night in Athens
The APD and Ohio University Police Department officers are working together in the Uptown bars on foot patrol as part of a new joint policing initiative.
By teaming up, the two departments can utilize the best of the campus and city police departments for more effective patrolling.
These two officers are just one example of how the Ohio University Police Department and APD work together every single day.
The working relationship between OUPD and APD began in 1824 when OU's Board of Trustees appointed the first watchman to guard the campus, according to Robert E. Guinn's The History of the Security Department of Ohio University, a report he compiled for OUPD.
But the exact details of their working agreements would be slowly ironed out overtime, Guinn said.
When OUPD began operating more as a police force in the 1960s it consisted of eight uniformed personnel and one plain clothes investigator, according to the report.
At this time the campus officers stuck primarily to campus, Guinn said. In fact, if a fight broke out near College Book Store, 50 S. Court St., OUPD didn't have the jurisdiction to walk across the street and stop the fight.
The university officers weren't to be running off into town
he said.
But slowly during the next 30 years, the two stations began a gradual transformation toward mutual communication, respect and control, he said.
You don't change the scene overnight at the university Guinn said.
Today, the stations share radio frequencies and often communicate directly how each station will respond to calls, said APD Chief Richard Mayer. The 911 dispatcher used to act as a third party relaying calls between the stations, which made for slower response times.
Most calls that cross jurisdictions are still on an ask-first basis. For example, if APD officers want to question a student who lives on campus, they must first contact OUPD, said OUPD Chief Tony Camechis.
And these calls are frequent. Campus is entwined with the city, meaning university officers sometimes patrol city streets, such as Mill and Stewart streets, and city officers are found on campus streets, Camechis said.
And the sharing doesn't stop there, Mayer said. This year the police departments are developing a plan to have university officers respond to off-campus parties and calls.
By combining forces, officers will have two different perspectives when handling a student problem, he said. Students often view OUPD officers as friendly and more willing to talk about problems, while APD officers tend to get right down to business.
There is a different approach. In some ways you might say it's political in nature he said.
The city is hard to patrol, Mayer said, because it is a round-the-clock endeavor.
In a normal city of 23,000, people aren't really out after 11 p.m. But in Athens, where 19,000 of the population are college-aged, the hours intensified, and the late-night calls are more prolific, he said.
The extra hours and increased late-night calls are one reason the two departments are perceived differently, Camechis said. Because on-campus residents are closer, OUPD has an easier time answering all the calls, leaving time for officers to participate in campus events like pre-college and self-defense training.
Also, OUPD officers often walk through residence halls on no business
getting a chance to talk to students in a less intimidating manner, he said.
But even this approach, called community-oriented policing, can have its drawbacks, Camechis said.
It kind of works both ways sometimes
he said. We often get responses like
'oh
you're just campus police.' We have the same authority and the same police responsibility as the city.
Through joint-patrol, the stations hope to combine the increased face-time of OUPD, with the authority gained by APD officers.
One area that joint-patrol has already shown results is the added foot patrol on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.
Camechis said it's too soon to tell if the joint patrols Uptown are working because they've only been out a few weekends, but increased police presence never hurts.
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Lauren McDowell
