IU Public Safety will add a new deputy superintendent and chief law enforcement officer to lead the IU Police Department’s law enforcement operations on all IU campuses throughout the state, per an IU press release Monday.
Anthony Williams, currently a police lieutenant of operations for Northwest Missouri State University Police Department, will serve in the position beginning Aug. 1.
IUPD Public Information Officer Hannah Skibba wrote in an email to the Indiana Daily Student that the IUPD Bloomington chief of police position was repurposed into the new chief law enforcement officer position. IUPD Bloomington interim chief of police, Margo Bennett, will help train Williams, who will take over her duties, before she leaves her current position.
“This position helps us separate the critical duties of operations and administration,” Skibba wrote in a statement on behalf of IUPD. “As the Deputy Superintendent and Chief Law Enforcement Officer, Anthony Williams will oversee operations across the state, while Deputy Superintendent Brad Seifers will oversee all IUPD administration and support services.”
In the position, Williams will also work with IU Public Safety superintendent Ben Hunter “to set performance standards for the department” and “develop, recommend, and implement policies and procedures for law enforcement and public safety activities on every IU campus.”
Williams graduated from the FBI National Academy and has a Master of Business Administration and Bachelor of Science in corporate recreation and wellness, according to the release.
During his time at the Northwest Missouri State University Police Department, where he has served for nearly 15 years, Williams expanded the police department’s mental health resources, developed its crisis response and took steps to increase community and student engagement, according to the release.
Williams, coming from a school with an enrollment around 9,600, said one of his priorities when adapting to IU is understanding its climate, both within the police department and university wide.
That includes remaining involved in and communicating with the community by partnering with university departments and keeping an “open door” when it comes to input from students and faculty, he said.
“I think community engagement and that community policing is a strategy, is a philosophy,” Williams said. “We’re not changing necessarily policing, but we’re changing the way we do police.”
IU administration distributed a university policy draft that would govern expressive activity on all IU campuses for IU student and faculty feedback in June. This followed the arrest of 57 protesters in April at a pro-Palestine encampment in Dunn Meadow.
Although a final policy hasn’t been approved by the Board of Trustees, Williams said IUPD intends to approach future expressive activity “with good quality service and safety at the forefront.”
“I think the biggest piece is that they sent that policy out, or the draft, and having that feedback from the community,” Williams said. “That’s huge, and again I think that’s going to be huge for a lot of those things that we do also, to be able to have that feedback moving forward.”
According to the release, Williams was one of the finalists chosen by a selection committee, co-chaired by IUPD Deputy Superintendent Brad Seifers and Chief Diversity Officer Tricia Edwards. The committee also included students, faculty and staff. Spelman Johnson, an executive search firm, assisted the selection committee, as well.
