Chief explains abduction attempt

By Chan Tran
Daily Forty-Niner

The Daily Forty-Niner recently conducted a question and answer session with University Police Chief Jack Pearson about the current state of the department and other issues related to the fall semester.

Pearson came to Cal State Long Beach in August 1992 from the Kansas City area. He has been in university law enforcement for 28 years including positions at the University of Kansas.

He earned a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's in public administration. Pearson did his graduate work at the FBI National Academy and attended the Secret Service Executive Protection Academy.

Daily Forty-Niner: Could you tell the campus the current state of University Police. What are some of the changes? Are you hiring more staff or officers?

Jack Pearson: The university goes through a Resource Planning Process where all units on the campus must do a budget presentation and receive recommendations on what programs are needed. RPP recommended, and President Robert Maxson approved funding for four additional police officer positions. All four positions are filled. We also received funding at the division level from the Division of Administration and Finance for a full-time emergency preparedness coordinator. That person is on board now as well.

DFN: Why is there a need for more officers on campus?
JP: We were able to demonstrate that the increase in enrollment at CSULB created more activity – calls for service, traffic enforcement and crime prevention presentations have gone up. Everything has dramatically increased and we were able to demonstrate that to RPP. They said we needed more people. The emergency preparedness coordinator position came from the provost vice president's decision. He was convinced we need a full-time position.

DFN: What types of funding have been provided from the campus?
JP: The police department has not received any university funding increases for the eight years that I have been here. In fact, when I got here, we were in a budget crisis statewide. We ended up cutting positions and laying people off, we've not recovered from that loss in eight years.

DFN: How successful has the escort service on campus been? Are people more informed the service?
JP: In a 35,000 people population, maybe a few don't get the word. But every semester we widely distribute the pamphlet information, post it in several spots. Our crime prevention unit makes presentations to all University 100-level classes and we mention it to all incoming freshmen. So I have to say the majority of the campus is aware of the service.

DFN: The U.S. Department of Education is reviewing CSU campuses for underreporting sexual assaults. How has our campus faired?
JP: The department has already given us a clean bill of health. I feel pretty comfortable with our sexual assaults reporting. I think we're in good shape. The standard belief is that that's a very unreported crime area. Very few sexual assaults are reported.

DFN: How did they review CSULB?
JP: They reviewed our Web site for reporting and pulled reports we filed for consistency. They also looked at the system wide crime reports that are put out every year. They saw no need to come and specifically investigate the CSULB campus.

DFN: Two months ago there was an attempted abduction on campus, and since then faculty and students have voiced opinions about the coverage. Do you feel it is the campus' job or University Police's job to keep the campus informed about the incident?
JP: The law says it's the campus' job but I don't want to hide behind that. I think we have an obligation also. It was this office that initiated that official press release and we felt we did a pretty good job. But in retrospect, doing the flier probably wouldn't have hurt. Maybe we should have considered that.

DFN: Do you feel it is the campus' decision to make sure the information is sufficiently distributed?
JP: No. The campus pretty much default to us to make the judgment on what needs to be put out and we're guided by federal and state laws.

DFN: Cypress College had a sexual assault and released flier and postings. In light of how its campus safety reacted, do you think flier might have been helpful for CSULB?
JP: At the time of the attempted abduction we thought we did a pretty good job of getting the information out. We feel it was a completely random act. There is nothing for us to suggest that these two guys will be back on campus.

DFN: How does University Police respond to people on campus who have voiced discomfort about the incident?
JP: Based on the information that came out in the newspaper we would reconsider sending out flyers if something similar happened in the future.

DFN: Has there been any progress in the abduction investigation?
JP: No, we are dead in the water right now. We explored a number of leads and suspects and none of them panned out.

DFN: What do you expect for the future of the police department for the rest of the year?
JP: We're in the midst of a re-organization, and I want to see that finalized. I've increased the staff in the crime prevention unit. I would like to see lower response times. It's higher than what we would like to see. Our average right now is running four minutes. We want it to be two minutes.