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One year ago Tuesday, former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch released a year-long review of Syracuse University’s Department of Public Safety. Since then, DPS has completed 20 out of Lynch’s 23 recommendations, with the three incomplete resolutions currently in progress.

DPS responded to Lynch’s recommendations with 53 resolutions. Of those resolutions, 50 are fully completed — slightly above 94%.

SU Chancellor Kent Syverud announced the creation of the review on Feb. 24, 2020, nearly two years ago — the eighth day of #NotAgainSU’s occupation of Crouse Hinds Hall.

“I am not proud of how last week’s events involving student protesters in Crouse-Hinds Hall were handled,” Syverud said in an email statement at the time announcing the creation of the independent review.

The Daily Orange broke down the current state of each of the three uncompleted resolutions.

Recommendation three is still in progress. Its long-term resolution stated that Bobby Maldonado, the outgoing department chief at the time, will prepare for transitioning the management of the Student of Color Advisory Committee to the new leadership.

The transition should include meeting the new chief and providing historical information of the committee. The meeting was expected to be initiated after a new chief was planned to be identified on July 1, 2021.

Maldonado originally planned to retire on Aug. 1, 2021, but stayed on throughout the fall semester because a new chief had yet to be found.

In December, Senior Vice President for the Student Experience Allen Groves stated in a University Senate meeting that the search committee for a new DPS chief was down to six candidates. On-campus interviews for the position would take place in January, and the committee hoped the decision would be finalized during the spring 2022 semester, Groves said.

Eight days after Groves’ announcement, Syverud sent out a campus-wide email stating that an interim leadership team would oversee DPS following Maldonado’s retirement on Dec. 31. Members of the interim leadership team include Dan French, the senior vice president and general counsel; Candace Campbell Jackson, the senior vice president and chief of staff; and Groves.

The report expressed that although the Student of Color Advisory Committee originated in 2019, it largely failed to improve relations between DPS and students of color because members of the committee felt that DPS was not responsive to their concerns.

The recommendation emphasizes that while there are many proposed initiatives to promote accountability for DPS, this committee would provide a channel specific to students of color to have open lines of communication with the department.

Ivana Xie | Asst. Digital Editor

Recommendation 21, which pertains to using third-party technologies to share crime statistics and officer call reports in order to provide such data in an objective manner, has yet to see its long-term solution completed.

The long-term solution involves posting this data on social media automatically and was originally due to be completed by Jan. 15, 2022.

DPS already completed its short- and midterm resolutions of partnering with the Central New York Crime Analysis Center to create an incident and crime data report for publishing at the chief’s discretion and creating a website to post appropriate data daily, respectively.

While DPS already completed the short and long-term resolutions for Recommendation 23, the midterm solution, which consists of consulting the Graduate Student Organization, the Student Association and the Students of Color Advisory Committee for input on how community service officers and other non-law enforcement staff at DPS respond to incidents, is still in progress.

The original due date for this resolution was June 4, 2021.

DPS already completed the short-term resolution of preparing to hire community service officers to respond to calls that do not require a law enforcement officer and the long-term goal of hiring such officers.

Published on February 22, 2022 at 11:36 pm

Contact Kyle: kschouin@syr.edu | @Kyle_Chouinard