St. John's News

St. John’s administrators work tirelessly to ensure that our students are provided with a quality, affordable education that embodies our Vincentian mission. In an effort to give new and prospective students, their parents and friends, as well as our returning students, a glimpse into the responsibilities, challenges and concerns of St. John’s leadership, we’re presenting a series of interviews with those who make a St. John’s education the stimulating, student-centered and rewarding experience that it is.

In this interview, Vice President of Public Safety Thomas J. Lawrence discusses the challenges and rewards of heading a University security team. Vice President Lawrence joined St. John’s University after a distinguished 23-year career with the New York City Police Department and has been Vice President since July 2005.

Q.: Vice President Lawrence, could you describe your responsibilities at St. John’s?

A.: Public Safety has responsibility for the safety of all our students, faculty, staff and administrators on all of St. John’s campuses—including the two abroad—as well as those who visit our campuses.  My team works around the clock to ensure that while they’re on campus, they are secure and well-protected.

Q.: Tell us about your team?

A.: Our Public Safety Department has a lot more experience than a lot of small-town police departments.  Two-thirds of our full-time officers are former law enforcement officers who bring different skills and a variety of experiences within law enforcement. Another third are security professionals. It’s a great mix and they complement each other extremely well.

Currently, we have eight supervisors and 53 full-time officers on the Queens campus. We’ll be hiring five more officers to accommodate the increased resident population we’re expecting when 500 new beds in St. Vincent Hall and the Founders Village townhouses come on line this fall.

In addition, there are three supervisors plus 16 officers on Staten Island, and one supervisor and four full-time officers in Manhattan who are supplemented with per diem officers to ensure there are always two officers on duty there. With the opening of the new Paris and Rome campuses in the fall, we’ll add a security person to each campus to ensure security at those locations.

Q.: Describe a day in the life of a Public Safety officer.

A.: There are anywhere from 10-12 officers working a specific tour and most rotate through the various assignments, ensuring that they have a solid knowledge of all jobs. Two are always working in the Command Center: one dispatches the calls to the officers and one monitors the CCTV system.

Officers assigned to patrol respond to a variety of requests—unlocking an office door for someone who has forgotten a key or escorting a student with a broken ankle from the dorm to, say, Carnesecca for a sports event—and interact a lot more with the campus community as they travel around.

They also respond to calls for assistance, such as when someone is sick or injured. If the person needs medical help, the officer might also meet the ambulance at the gate and escort it to the person’s location. It’s a team effort beginning with the dispatcher in the Command Center and ending with getting the person the help needed.

One exception: officers assigned to the Residence Village are not a part of the rotation schedule. They are “dedicated’ to the dormitories, because we want the students who live there to recognize “their” officers, get to know them and feel comfortable with them.

I should also note that for back-up we have the best police department in the world—The New York City Police Department—right in our backyard. 

Q.: You’re a former member of the NYPD, correct?

A.: Yes, I retired as a deputy chief. It was something I’d wanted to do since I was four years old.  My current position is very similar because I’m still working to keep people safe and that’s sometimes quite challenging. Working with a terrific Public Safety team has made the transition a lot easier for me. 

Q.: St. John’s has a good relationship with NYPD? 

A.: Yes, a great relationship. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is a graduate of St. John’s School of Law and a great confidant of the University.  In between his two tenures as police commissioner, he did a risk assessment for St. John’s and virtually all of his recommendations were implemented. To this day, we continue to review that assessment to ensure that nothing has slipped through the cracks and that there’s nothing we should be adding.  So, from the very top of the NYPD right down to the patrol officers here in the 107th Precinct, we have a great relationship. 

Q.: Can you elaborate?

A.: We bring in NYPD specialists to speak with our officers—including those on Staten Island and Manhattan—during their training, which occurs twice a year. This past June, we had their Special Victims unit here during training and we had the Residence Directors to sit in on that. We’ve also brought in other NYPD units that might provide pertinent and timely information about keeping our community safe.

The fact that we have those relationships and that two-thirds of our officers have previously worked in law enforcement has helped us to produce better trained officers.  

Q.: Tell us more about the training.

A.: It’s about 40 hours a year. Officers have two eight-hour sessions a year and then get additional training both on- and off-site. This past year our officers attended the course “Tools for Tolerance” in Manhattan, which heightened their awareness of diversity. It’s very much in line with our Vincentian mission’s call to treat everyone with respect.  And we just added a new component.  We have one officer, a security professional for most of her life, who is very customer-service oriented. Because she’s so good at what she does, we put her with new officers for a week. She drives them around campus, takes them into buildings and introduces them to our campus community so they get to know the new officer and she or he gets to know them. She also points out specific locations, e.g., not just Marillac Hall but where Marillac Terrace is located in Marillac Hall. We started this three or four months ago and we’re getting good feedback.

Q.: Do you work with the Fire Department also?

A.: St. John’s Fire Safety Director, a retired deputy chief from FDNY who has retired firemen working for him, reports to the Director of Environmental Health and Safety, who in turn reports to me. So we have a great relationship with the firehouses in the areas around our campuses. He routinely brings the FDNY on campus to do “walk-arounds” and every other Sunday they have familiarization drills in which they walk through campus buildings to study the layouts in case an emergency ever occurs. 

Right now, with the construction projects underway in Queens, we’re bringing them on campus frequently to view the construction and the different routes that they might have to take if there’s an emergency and the usual route is inaccessible. 

Q.: Are there fire drills on campus?

A.: Yes, three times a year, for each building.  This year we’ll be utilizing the newly installed public address system as part of the fire drills so that people become aware of it and understand what to expect if an announcement is made over the system and how to respond.

Q.: Tell us about that new PA system.

A.: We decided to enhance our emergency communications options, which already include, among other things, text- and voice-messaging and email, with a public address system. Our intent is to provide information and directions as quickly as possible to those in common areas such as hallways and lobbies as well as outdoors.  We’ve had great success with our other emergency communications tools but are adding the PA system to reach more of our campus community quicker.

We’re also adding emergency phones in every classroom so that faculty can, in case of emergency, receive or make calls to access or provide information.

Q.: St. John’s upgraded to a digital video-surveillance system awhile back. Why?

A.: About three years ago, we installed our new system. Previously, there was a VCR system that was hard to manage and when an incident occurred on campus, it took forever to locate it on tape for review.  We worked closely with Information Technology to acquire a user-friendly system that would help officers to identify and review incidents quickly and easily, and monitor all of our campuses and locations from the Queens Command Center.  It also allows us to view remote locations in real time, as well as review digitally stored archived footage.

I can monitor—and even re-position—any of these cameras from home, not only for campus incidents, but also for weather emergencies. I can check campus conditions in the early morning and, if necessary, recommend the University be closed.

We now have more than 300 cameras—that’s not many when you have hundreds of acres—and we’ll be adding more this summer.

Q.: Tell us about last spring’s Emergency Preparedness Training for Faculty and Staff and Administrators.

A.: The training was strongly recommended by the University’s Emergency Response Committee. Among other things, it provides them with information about our Emergency Response Plan, who comprises the Emergency Executive and Operations teams, what response is expected, the communication tools we have in place, and so on.

To date almost all administrators have completed the training, as have most of the faculty and staff.  We’ll continue the sessions in the fall until everyone has been trained.

Q.: What challenges have you encountered as head of Public Safety?

A.: Initially, there was an adjustment period. I had to become accustomed to interacting with departments other than Public Safety. Mainly, I work with Student Life and Residence Life.  I speak with Student Life daily, then meet with them weekly to go over the judicial cases.  We constantly share information, which is important for the safety of the entire community, including our officers’ safety. 

Q.: What do you like the best about working at St. John’s?

A.: I like the fact that I’m busy and that the work is similar to police work, which I loved. With 61 officers, 100 acres, and 26 buildings on our Queens campus alone, it’s a big job.  We’re fortunate senior management has been very supportive of Public Safety. Without their support, we wouldn’t have been able to implement all the new security enhancements.

I get to work with great people, not just within Public Safety but throughout the University, and everyone is helpful.

The students are terrific. Their safety—and the safety of everyone on our campuses—is my highest priority, 24/7.