The UW-Madison Police Department bid farewell to their chief of 25 years, Sue Riseling, at the end of this past spring semester. Stepping into her shoes for the time being is Brian Bridges, an officer in his fourth decade with the force. Bridges is no stranger to campus law enforcement, having worked at UW-Eau Claire before coming to UW-Madison. Bridges has no intention of remaining chief?the future permanent chief will be chosen by the university from a pool of applicants from all over the nation, most likely in November or December of this year?and will return to assistant chief status once one is selected. For the time being, he will lead UWPD during the busy fall season of Badger game days and Halloween. He sat down with The Daily Cardinal to discuss his plans for handling these events and other common occurrences, and what he expects from this semester.
Q: What are some of the biggest challenges that you expect to face as UWPD police chief?
A: I've been here for 32 years, and in that time I've spent the last roughly 15 in senior management. We're doing a couple things?we're tripley accredited, so our main accreditation effort will start this fall and go into early spring, and that takes a lot of thought and effort to make sure that we're meeting all our benchmarks. We've started a number of initiatives under Chief Riseling that we're going to continue, things like public information with the "Tell Us" campaign and "Don't Be That Guy," which raises awareness for sexual assault and its reporting. We're working with our partners in University Housing and University Health Services for the "First 45 Days" initiative, which seeks to educate incoming students, freshmen in particular, about the “dos and don'ts” on campus and living together as part of a community. I think we'll also be working on how to make sure the community understands how to get along together a little bit, how to be Badgers together and support those initiatives on the campus.
Q: You touched on educating individuals on sexual assault. I'm aware that there's a new Title IX coordinator at UHS; how will you work with them to raise awareness about sexual assault and combat related issues?
A: We all have our piece of it. [UWPD] typically gets involved either very early on through an investigation, but, because there's so many ways that people can report Title IX issues to the campus, sometimes we intake those reports and are the first responder, other times we are made aware of a report and encourage the victim to come talk to us. Sometimes we are just aware that the incident happened, but if the victim doesn't want any further contact with the police then our involvement is rather limited. It can be in any one of those formats, as well as pushing information out when appropriate if it's an urgent situation.
Q: What plans do you have to combat these challenges, and the others you mentioned earlier, and maintain safety on campus, especially with busy game day weekends coming up?
A: The absolute good and bad news is that I've been doing this for a long time and, fortunately, not a lot of new ways are being introduced into the mix, so football game days look pretty typical from one year to the next. The challenge this year is that we have a few late afternoon games and we also have two night games, and I believe that is a first for us. That brings a challenge because one night game is centered around what is traditionally Halloween weekend, so we have a lot of people in town for Badger game day, and the positive experience of the game day atmosphere that surrounds Camp Randall will transition into the exciting Halloween atmosphere of the weekend. It's going to be busy, it's going to be challenging, and we're going to need the whole community to help each other. The police, whether it's UWPD or Madison Police Department, can only do so much at these really busy times and we need other folks to step up and make sure people are staying safe.
Q: A safety issue that is prominent during weekends such as those is underage drinking. How do plan to take action against that problem?
A: Underage drinking has been around for a very long time. We use behavior-based enforcement, which typically means there's something else that happens to draw the attention of officers to that person that's underage. Usually by the time we're in contact with the person they're pretty intoxicated?they may be incapacitated and require a trip to detox, they may be loud and obnoxious, or just need help finding out where they are. We've tried to maintain a pretty even keel; we don't really have any interest in going out and just ticketing anyone that's underage for an alcohol violation because, frankly, we'd be too busy, and what's the point? So, typically, there's a fight, vandalism or, everyone's favorite, public urination, those things that bring us into contact with students and, during the course of the investigation, we find out that they are both underage and drinking and typically receive citations for that. Also, it's bigger than just the police department. We learned long ago that the biggest impact we can make on incoming freshmen's drinking habits is right away. We bring education and enforcement; the Unions have programming before classes start, residence halls have a huge piece in that through teaching students about safe alternatives to drinking on campus. We know that most of the more serious crimes we see usually involve the victim, the perpetrator, or both being intoxicated. The big issues typically correlate with alcohol use, so the overuse of alcohol probably remains our biggest safety issue on campus.
Q: Can you explain to me the policy for what UWPD does when an underage, intoxicated person calls to get help for someone else?
A: We have a guideline that we follow called the "responsible actions" guideline. If your friend is incapacitated and needs help and you've been drinking, the guideline states that if you call police for help and get your friend what they need and cooperate you will not be cited for underage drinking. The person who calls, who does the right thing, does not need to feel afraid that they'll get in trouble because they've been drinking. If we are made aware of a sexual assault victim, that victim is not cited for underage alcohol consumption because they need help. Typically, they have been a victim because of use of alcohol or some random set of facts, but we want them to come forward so we can get them to the right resources. If they choose to use a different university resource that's fine with us, but we do not cite those victims of sexual assault. Typically people in the community that are doing well by trying to report that something has happened to their friend will not get cited because they are trying to help and do the right thing. Again, we're focused on behavior-based issues because on any given night there's probably 10,000 underage drinkers that aren't doing anything wrong. It's the ones that are doing wrong that we want to hold accountable and the victims that we want to get help for. The other category we see frequently throughout the year are those that are so intoxicated that they need to go to detox. Those people do receive a citation to put them in the very start of the court system where they can get resources about education on drinking. They get a citation as part of a follow-up visit with a police officer, which typically involves a visit to the individual within a day or two of the incident. We explain what the citation is and the process. Then, as part of the "First 45 Day" initiative, we have student debriefers that meet with the student outside the police department and gather data about what led into that experience. They gather that information and put it in a report so the university can address how to make an impact on other students, whether it’s alcohol drinking or a component, and put an end to risky behaviors.
Q: Can you explain in detail what the "First 45 Days" initiative is?
A: In the first 45 days of the school year we track data closely. We work with UHS, who compiles the report, and then they compare it. We staff certain times and locations heavily during these days to build community expectations. We are always at the residence halls in the evenings during these times and will make sure you're safe if you look questionable. Enforcement and education are two pieces that we have in this around the clock. UHS, the Dean of Students office and Housing also have roles in this. It's really trying to set an expectation early in the year, and what we've seen in the last three years is that crime and underage drinking is lower second semester since we've started to work to educate people around the area at the very beginning. It really lets people know what's going on, and helps to acclimate students to campus and give them the help they need to succeed.
Q: Switching gears a bit. Last year we saw a rise in student demonstrations towards the end of second semester. What strategies do you have for controlling these, and what restrictions should students know before participating in these kinds of events?
A: This is UW-Madison. Student protests and community involvement is one of the reasons that people come here. We encourage people to express their civil liberties, and we will facilitate that. If someone wants to march, we'll help get them across the sidewalk. Where the issues are is if someone expressing their constitutional rights bumps up against somebody else's constitutional rights, we have to mitigate that. It's, again, really just an educational effort. We don't mind protests; it's really what this place is about, and has been about in the time that I've been here. We'd rather students be involved in what's going on in the world than chasing Pokemon. We expect protests, they raise social awareness and consciousness and are a good way to become involved in the community. 99 times out of 100 they are very peaceful, but the city has made it clear that there are guidelines. If you sit in the street for too long, they are going to come and arrest you. But we anticipate that, that's one of the things that makes this place great, is that sifting and winnowing of ideas and people advocating on the part of others.
Q: One such protest occurred last semester when an officer interacted with a student who was in class, which your predecessor, Sue Riseling, publicly apologized for. What are your views on classroom sanctity, and how will you handle situations that require you to approach a student who might be in class at the time?
A: Typically we want to reserve that for emergency circumstances. We've adopted a policy that clarifies that. There is no rule, other than the procedure that we created, that prohibits an officer from going into any classroom. But we do want to save that for an emergency.
Q: What is something you want every student to know as you begin your position as interim chief of UWPD?
A: As you see from events across our country, we need everybody to participate in making this a better and safer campus. People need to learn about each other and take the time to develop a frame of reference and educate ourselves about the issues in society, what issues people personally have going on. It really takes all of us to support all of our students, support everyone. People bring different things with them, and most of it does not start the day they get here. We want to be a welcoming place to everyone, and people need to speak up for others, because some people can't speak up for themselves. We need to be a welcoming, safe space for the exchange of ideas. That takes all of us.
