by: Karli Mauldin
The Troy University police department and the criminal justice department have partnered together to let students become security officers for a semester.
This job has entitled the student security officers to help be an extra set of eyes on campus, along with day to day work such as checking buildings to make sure they’re secure along with parking tickets.
The campus police department and the criminal justice department interviewed 12 students for this position but only picked four.
Chief John McCall plans to have the new security officers out in the field within the next week in uniform on either golf carts or on foot like other security officers and their hours will be from dark to 2 a.m.
“The only difference between these student officers is that they will not be going to the police academy,” McCall said. “It’s a paid job, but the students will still receive less than officers. The key with the student officers is that we’re trying to give these students experience, so when they do graduate they can say that they’ve worked with the police department or worked for the police department.”
McCall believes these four students are important to the program as they want to continue this program each year by making it rotational and hopefully be able to place the student officers into police officer positions by next year if the experience works out.
While the student officers will be pepper spray certified and will have other personal defense items, they will not be allowed to have firearms.
“This does not have anything to do with the recent crimes like the robbery,” McCall said. “Dr. Hawkins wanted this position to happen before and plans for this position have been in the works since last semester.”
The police department looks forward to having four extra eyes on campus every night helping keep the campus safe.
