The Cerritos Campus Police Chief, Don Mueller, went to the Aug. 17 board of trustee meeting to present the new changes that the police department made and their changed mission statement.
Mueller talked about the atrocities with George Floyd and Uvalde, explaining how much of an impact that had on everyone.
“We need to be able to keep our faculty and students safe but at the same time, we need to do policing different,” Mueller said, “We need to hear and acknowledge the problems that do exist and do something different here.”
The first thing the police chief talked about was the difference between college campus policing and regular policing.
Mueller said that there is a smaller amount of crime on college campuses while also saying that the college police and students can get to know each other on a first-name basis.
“Our officers should be more like the older brother and older sister to our students,” Mueller said, “I want them to deal with our students the same way they would deal with their older brother or younger sister.”
“We are not here to police our students,” Mueller added, “99.99% of our students on campus and our staff on campus are here for the right reason.”
“We should be here to support them [students] 100% … I want the students to know that the minute they’re on their campus, that we, their CCPD, here has our backs,” Mueller said.
The campus police chief talked about changing its mission statement, which factors in on what their duty is as police officers and had changed its regulations over the past two years.
They also added training for these policies like de-escalation tactics, cultural awareness training, racial profiling and implicit bias training and LGBTQ training.
For example, in the de-escalation training, officers have to do 32 hours of crisis and de-escalation training.
“I learned a long time ago … that training and policies don’t change people,” Mueller said, “What changes people are relationships and experiences. When they get to know somebody.”
Mueller talked about how you can give a racist all the policies and training yet they won’t change.
The CCPD police chief stressed the importance of being a “big brother” and being family to the students so that if they do run into a problem, they know who to talk to.
Another important thing the campus police are doing is that they’re beginning to wear body cameras and they’re beginning the program once the contract is finalized.
“If our officers are doing the right thing, we should be recorded,” Mueller adds, “That’s the way it should be. We want to be open to that and share that. There is nothing to be afraid of.”
The presentation ended with Mueller saying, “Today, I think we’re headed in a good direction. We have not had a single complaint for two years but we always need to keep working to be better.”
