Q&A: Steven Healy

Steven Healy has been the University's director of Public Safety since Jan. 1. Before coming to Princeton, Healy was the police chief at Wellesley College. A U.S. Air Force Academy graduate, Healy was the deputy chief of police of the 170-person division at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., in the early '90s.

'Prince' senior writer Brian Henn met Healy on Friday for a short interview.

'Prince': As director of Public Safety what are your day-today obligations?

Healy: The first couple of months, I really focused on understanding what some of the issues were in the department. In the first month that I was here I had the opportunity to sit down with every single member of the department, interview them and talk about what some of their aspirations were and what some of the changes they would like to see in the department were.

Those interviews really set the foundation for what we are doing. Now we have a number of different work teams in place, and they are focusing on things such as the image of our department, how we treat one another and how we treat the public, and what the right mix of services are that we are providing to the department.

We just finished two weeks ago a week-long community polling training . . . which is based on the idea that first and foremost you have to develop very close partnerships with members of the community. Then we use those partnerships to help solve problems in the community, whether they are crime problems or quality of life issues or general disorder. Whatever those problems are we have to be engaged in that on a day-today basis, so we are really kind of reorienting how it is that we do business . . .

Now we're trying to put the meat and potatoes to that philosophy. So how is that going to play out in the community? What are some of the things we are going to be doing to engage the community, especially students?

I don't know if you know about the program that we used to have, called "Adopt a PUPS." We changed that program and called it now the CPI [for] "community partnership initiative."

That is a program or a strategy, where for each residential college, we'll have a group of officers that are assigned primarily as a liaison. They serve to not only develop partnerships but help the residents in that particular community . . .

We're going to have officers assigned to a number of student organizations. Again they'll serve that role as a liaison. Also with the athletic teams, we'll have liaisons for those two groups . . .

We are actually going to do a campus safety walk, where we walk around the campus to identify areas that students think pose safety problems, either because of the lighting or pedestrian safety. We've had a problem on campus this year with that, so we're going to get probably about 20 people or so on the campus walk.

It is just going to be a time to get together, walk around campus, make sure we understand what the students' concerns are about physical security . . .

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

P: What is the worst single incident you've had to deal with since you've been at Princeton?

H: The student suicide at the beginning of this year [graduate student Gabor Katona on Jan. 20]. Any time you lose a member that's very sad, and that was shortly after I got here.

P: What are the biggest safety issues for students?

H: The biggest one that we deal with on a regular basis is larcenies — thefts from students' rooms. When you walk around campus it's very easy to get lulled into a false sense of security, believing that nothing bad ever happens here, so students tend to leave their doors unlocked, and we have a lot of theft.

It's not outsiders coming in and doing it. A lot of it is based in the residential colleges and residence halls, so we have to figure out some way to help students understand that although the campus is very safe, you have to take certain precautions . . .

We have to help students understand that they have a role in community safety as well, and that role starts with them making sure that they take care of themselves from a safety standpoint.

I guess the other issue is issues around alcohol and the effects that alcohol or the abuse of alcohol has not only on individuals from a medical standpoint but also for community quality of life.

Nobody wants to have to stay up with a roommate because they're intoxicated or step over vomit in the residential colleges or deal with damage to property. Nobody wants to have to deal with those sorts of things, so that's an issue we have to deal with, but everybody in the university is dealing with that, not just us . . .

P: Do you think the way that the alcohol policy on campus is enforced is the appropriate way to deal with alcohol abuse?

H: I think that our policy is very similar to a lot of other policies that I have seen around the country. Although we have kind of a boilerplate policy, we have to figure out what works best for Princeton.

We know for a fact that a lot of the high-risk drinking that occurs, occurs in the residential setting, and then students go down to the Street. A lot of the problems that have been manifested on Prospect Avenue actually started in the residential colleges . . .

P: What have you learned about Princeton since your arrival? Is there anything that has surprised you about life at Princeton?

H: Well I don't think anything about life in Princeton has really surprised me. I think I had a good appreciation for the institution. It's always difficult when you're trying to navigate a new landscape, so that has been interesting . . .

I've been really impressed with the department. I have 62 people, and by and large they are a very dedicated and committed people and ready to move in a direction that we are trying to lay out.

P: Did anything strike you off the bat as being different here than at Wellesley?

H: Yeah a few things (laughing).

Before I went to Wellesley I was at Syracuse, a coed institution with NCAA sports. Those ingredients make for a different environment. At Wellesley — all women — the atmosphere is a little different.

I guess I probably had forgotten about the number of incidents that we have, like vandalism and fights and those kinds of things you deal with here. I had kind of gotten out of the moment a little but not that I had forgotten that the real world exists. It's just a little different, so that has been surprising, just the shear number of incidents. Part of that is just because it's an obviously larger community; we're a community of 13,000 people, and in Wellesley we were a community of about five thousand people . . .

P: You used to be the deputy chief of security at Edwards Air Force Base?

H: I was the operations officer for the Air Force security.

P: I imagine security is pretty tight there, since it's a space shuttle landing site.

H: We had a large community. We had about 25,000 people in the community, but the minute that a space shuttle landing was announced, the community would go from 25,000 to 250,000 just like that. That was exciting; it was exciting for me to be involved with the space shuttle program. We received a lot of training because we were on the space shuttle recovery team. I got to see a couple of space shuttles land . . .

People are usually shocked when I say this — but I think this was why it was so easy for me to make the transition from policing in the air force to policing in the colleges and universities because they're very similar in a lot of ways. The communities are very isolated. That's the same way it is at an air force base.

P: Before that you went to the United States Air Force Academy. Did you have any idea what you wanted to do when you came out of college?

H: I always wanted to be in law enforcement. I think all kids like to think "I want to be a cop." At some point they go through that stage, I just never left that stage.