After leaving his post, Healy will focus on his private consulting business and on broader efforts to improve campus safety at a national level.
During his tenure at the University, Healy worked to refine the University’s emergency response system in the wake of the campus shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University. In 2007, he oversaw the purchase and implementation of the Princeton Telephone and E-mail Notification System (PTENS), which allows administrators to send voicemails, e-mails and text messages to members of the University community during emergency situations.
PTENS was activated most recently on March 7 when students reported seeing Steven Shonts ’12 carrying a replica of an assault rifle across campus. The first alerts, which warned recipients to stay inside and lock their doors, were sent about 80 minutes after Public Safety received the first report of an armed student-age man on campus.
“The systems that we’ve put in place all worked the way that we expected them to work,” Healy said of Public Safety’s response to the March 7 incident.
Shonts turned himself in and was arrested by Borough Police after receiving an alert himself.
Though Public Safety worked in tandem with Borough Police officers to handle the gun scare, Charles Davall, Public Safety’s deputy director for operations, said that under Healy the University’s officers have actually become less dependent on support from Borough Police.
“In the short period of time that Chief Healy has been here, the Department of Public Safety has moved from a department that was just about completely dependent on the local police to provide policing services to a department that is much more independent from the local police,” Davall said in an e-mail.
“While we still work closely with the township and Borough Police and rely on them to conduct investigations of violent or serious personal crime, we now handle well over 90 [percent] of all criminal investigations that occur on campus,” he added.
During his tenure, Healy also oversaw personnel reforms at Public Safety and spearheaded the department’s shift to “community policing,” an approach that combines law enforcement with community education and directly involves Public Safety officials in student and staff organizations.
The University has contracted Boston-based search firm Isaacson, Miller to begin a national search for Healy’s replacement, said Treby Williams, Healy’s supervisor and an executive director in the Office of the Executive Vice President. The firm will conduct focus groups on campus for two days at the end of the month to assess concerns and seek feedback about the position from students, staff and faculty, she added.
There is at least one person already on campus looking to fill Healy’s position.
“Having served the University for the past four years and being mentored by Chief Healy during that time, I think I would merit some consideration for the position, whatever that position will look like,” said Davall, who served as the chief of police for Princeton Borough before coming to Public Safety in February 2005.
Healy will be “extremely missed” at the University, Williams said. “He has a terrific opportunity, and that’s what he’s ultimately decided to do, to embrace all those possibilities that his expertise has now led him to,” she added.
After he steps down this spring, Healy will work with his business partner, Gary Margolis, to ensure that all university security departments have the information and resources necessary to keep their campuses safe.
Healy will continue to work at his consulting firm, Margolis, Healy & Associates, and plan for the National Institute of Campus Safety (NICS), which Healy and Margolis are developing at the University of Vermont, where Margolis is chief of police.
Margolis said Healy’s national involvement in campus safety issues made him uniquely suited to assist in the development of the institute at Vermont.
“Steven has had his finger on the pulse of campus safety issues for quite some time,” Margolis explained.
Healy was president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators from 2006 to 2007 and a campus safety expert for the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Education, and he has testified before House and Senate committees on campus safety issues. In December 2007, he was named one of Security magazine’s “Top 25 Most Influential People in the Security Industry.”
From 2006 to 2008, Healy also served as chair of the advisory board which made recommendations on the creation of a National Center for Campus Public Safety that, if approved, will be funded by the Department of Justice and focus, at least in part, on research into campus safety issues. A bill to create the center was approved by the House in February.
Part of the motivation behind the founding of the institute at Vermont is to get a “head start” on the competitive bidding process that will determine which university will house the National Center for Campus Public Safety.
“Steven and I hope that by developing the program [which] we are developing now that when the time comes we’ll be in a good position to complete strongly to bring the national center in,” he explained, adding that though he and Healy may not be successful in bringing the center to Vermont, he thinks “it will be a win-win no matter what.”
As he works to build the NICS, Healy said his focus will partly be on campus safety research, an area that he said requires much more attention. He cited, as one potential application of this research, improving campus crime prevention programs that aim to educate students about measures they can take to ensure their personal safety.
The communication model used in these programs is very similar to those used in crime prevention for primary and secondary school students, Healy said.
“It’s not quite McGruff the Crime Dog, but it’s the same approach,” he explained. “That can’t possibly be quite as effective in the higher-education community as it would be with 9- to 14-year-olds,” he noted, adding that researchers should investigate more modern techniques, like Facebook or Twitter, to communicate with college students.
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