“I am armed with a handgun,” Jared Wyn told me. “So, if there were a situation in which we need to respond quickly, I’m kind of the first line of defense in terms of that until we can get more law enforcement here to help deal with those situations.”
I sat down with Wyn, the Supervisor of Campus Security on the Larimer campus, to find out more about what campus security does, how they’re trained, and what students on campus need to know about safety.
“Currently we just have supervisors who are armed on campus with handguns.” He continued, “Our [entry-level] technicians have other tools like a baton so they can intervene in a little bit lower-level situations.”
Wyn further explained that members of the Security and Preparedness team go through programs on field training, report writing, defensive tactics, CPR, first aid, and de-escalation. Further courses that are offered through the college are encouraged, such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion trainings.
He mentioned an example which he could discuss without compromising student privacy, since it was already in the news back in 2017. The incident, which took place in the Little Bear Peak building on Larimer Campus, involved a student pointing a loaded gun at a teacher during finals week.
“This instructor thankfully went into the hallway, so it actually was caught on camera, versus if it was in the classroom. We don’t have cameras in the classroom for many different reasons, but we wouldn’t have seen this interaction.”
The teacher, who was ex-military, was able to disarm the student and call for security, who were able to detain the student until Fort Collins police arrived.
“We learned a lot. We still are working on getting [someone] armed, so that we have someone armed on campus for the whole time that we’re open, which we currently don’t. We’re in the process of working through what that would look like and is that something the college wants to do. But it spawned a lot of questions from faculty and staff about our processes and who’s armed.”
“We are mandated to report any high-level crimes like murder or assault, those types of things, and they’re supposed to be available to the public and students. If they came to our window and said, ‘Hey, can I see your Clery crime log?’ we would show them.”
Wyn said that one of the priorities of campus security is building relationships with local police departments. This facilitates better communication in the event that officers report to an incident on campus. He mentioned hosting a visit from the CSU Police Department to observe a lockdown drill on the Larimer campus and how FRCC compares to a bigger university.
“When I met with them my biggest surprise is actually that we have a lot of things technology-wise that they don’t have. Like our door systems and having access control on all the doors, us being able to lock them with one button- CSU doesn’t have that. Obviously, CSU’s an older campus, more buildings, and there’s a lot of money and investment that would go into that. Us getting to this point took over a decade. But talking to them surprised me and also made me feel good in some ways, in that our tech is ahead of a place like CSU.”
I asked about how the restructuring of FRCC under the one college model has affected the security and preparedness team, but Wyn says not much has changed.
“We were one of the small number of departments that was basically already functioning under the one college model. Our director has been college-wide, overseeing all the campuses. We’ve been in that model at least as long as I’ve been here, which is seven years. So, when the change happened, we didn’t really change. You want the experience of interacting with campus security to be the same at each campus. It’s nothing new to us.”
Wyn shared that he often hears people making the assumption that nothing will happen on a small community college campus. Cautioning against that mentality, he advocates readiness instead.
“Most days are calm, cool. You go about your day, you interact with students and staff, nothing happens, right? Part of our job is to deal with all of the situations so that you as a student just worry about your studies, writing papers and things like that. Our goal is always to make sure that there’s not an incident that makes the news, but some of those things are out of your control, and you’ve just got to prepare. We want to make sure that we’re ready and can respond appropriately.”
Members of the security and preparedness team are available on request to make presentations on the Standard Response Protocol, which covers how to respond to most emergency situations. Stop by the security offices or watch a video through a link on the FRCC website:
https://www.frontrange.edu/student-experience/campus-security/index.html
To view the FRCC Clery crime log visit:
https://www.frontrange.edu/student-experience/campus-security/clery-act.html
