ISLG Partners with CUNY Public Safety to Develop a New Five-Year Strategic Plan
As part of the Efficiencies for Re-Investment & Innovation (ERI) initiative, ISLG worked with CUNY Public Safety to develop a new five-year strategic plan for their department. The plan is focused on enhancing community trust, implementing best practices, optimizing resource delivery, and investing in talent development.
In 2020, after the catalyzing police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, millions of people across the country protested excessive use of force by law enforcement and demanded accountability for victims of police violence. These protests led to a broad public call to eliminate bias within law enforcement departments, but also within national and local governments, schools and universities, and other large and powerful institutions. This created an impetus for CUNY to look internally and examine its policies and practices, listen to its community members, and implement meaningful reforms. The CUNY Public Safety Strategic Plan is one piece of these ongoing efforts.
CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez announced the appointment of André Brown as University Executive Director of Public Safety in late 2020, charging him with “the important and challenging work of ensuring that Public Safety’s policies and practices continue to meet the most current professional standards and reflect the University’s commitment to diversity and equity.” Additionally, the Chancellor asked for a “comprehensive review of public safety procedures and to oversee similar reviews at individual campus safety offices with a focus on better understanding implicit and explicit biases and strengthening relations between officers and the CUNY community.”
In response to this call to action, CUNY Public Safety partnered with ISLG to produce the Public Safety Strategic Plan 2021-2025. ISLG led 10 workshop sessions with public safety staff from each of the campuses and facilitated input from a 22-member steering committee made up of CUNY faculty, students, and public safety leadership. Committee members and workshop participants identified goals for public safety and strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOTs) impacting these goals, as well as strategies to address these SWOTs. Based on this input and corresponding literature review, ISLG established strategies for each goal area and indicators to measure success, and then conducted a validation process to confirm the plan. Where possible, ISLG evaluated available data from the CUNY Budget Office, Human Resources, and Public Safety to establish a baseline for indicators.
The plan includes four goal areas, with each goal including specific implementation strategies and indicators for measuring success, all expected to lead to the results that characterize a highly effective, community oriented Public Safety organization at CUNY.
Goal 1 – Enhance Community Trust, Interaction, and Accountability with a Focus on Equity and Elimination of Bias
Expected Results: High satisfaction ratings from students, faculty, and staff who consistently see Public Safety officers as guardians of their well-being.
Goal 2 – Utilize the Most Current Professional Standards, Policies, and Practices in Campus Public Safety
Expected Results: Accreditation through the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA) as a best-in-class Public Safety organization, affirming the use of industry best practices, policy guides, codes of conduct, and training.
Goal 3 – Optimize Resources for Delivery of Effective and Efficient Public Safety
Expected Results: A central office that consistently promotes the value of the Public Safety organization and delivers quality products and services to campuses more efficiently.
Goal 4 – Invest in Talent Development and Plan for the Future
Expected Results: An organization that attracts high caliber candidates for public safety roles with fair pay and a clear career path.
Addressing Calls for Reform
Goal 1, “Enhance Community Trust, Interaction, and Accountability with a Focus on Equity and Elimination of Bias,” directly addresses the push for reform and increased transparency and accountability from Public Safety officials. The strategies for achieving this first goal embody the philosophy of the 2015 Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, which calls for public safety agencies to “embrace a guardian—rather than a warrior—mindset to build trust and legitimacy both within agencies and with the public.”
To ensure that Public Safety achieves this trust of the CUNY community, the strategic plan calls for a robust commitment to community-based public safety at each of the campuses. The current efforts to engage stakeholder groups on individual campuses will be consolidated to create an expansive, CUNY-wide community engagement agenda that can be launched alongside a comprehensive communications campaign. Additionally, the plan includes strategies to identify and respond to complaints, ensuring that the community is being heard and supported. Making information on incidents and complaints available will provide transparency and allow Public Safety to work with the community to address issues identified by data. The success of these efforts to enhance community trust and perception will be tracked through a campus community survey of students, faculty, and staff.
Goal 2 of the plan calls for CUNY to work with the IACLEA to secure accreditation, which would ensure that CUNY’s community–based public safety agenda, training, and procedures are best in class. Accreditation includes evaluation of CUNY’s approach and policies by a peer review committee, as well as an evaluation of the CUNY Training Academy’s curriculum on community engagement and anti-bias interactions. It also will assess the value of new courses focused on building trust and accountability. Additionally, new tools will be developed to manage data collection and analysis.
Goal 3 includes strategies to enhance the Public Safety website to increase transparency and information sharing, such as offering training materials and campus incident data. Goal 3 also sets plans to evaluate new technologies that may improve effectiveness and efficiency without infringing on individual rights.
Strategies to support Goal 4 include expanding mental health services and support to Public Safety staff, building trust as part of the career advancement process, and evaluating staff on community engagements.
Next Steps for ISLG
ISLG will continue to work with Public Safety and play an ongoing role in the implementation of some aspects of the plan. To help accomplish the critical goal of expanding engagement and trust with the campus community, ISLG will work with Public Safety to issue a survey that assesses levels of trust and the campus community’s perception of the department.
Additionally, ISLG will play a role in overhauling the Public Safety website. The refurbished website will consolidate a robust online training library for the campus community and will be a repository for data and reports on crime, incidents, and complaints to increase transparency and accountability.
This strategic plan lays the groundwork by which CUNY will exemplify Public Safety's role as a department that maintains the highest professional standards while simultaneously reflecting the University’s deep-seated commitment to diversity and equity.