California Police Chief- Fall 2013 | Page 21

Retired Chief Helping to Reduce Campus Violence Ron Lowenberg is a familiar name in California law enforcement, having served as past president of the California Police Chiefs Association, the Orange Co. Chiefs’ and Sheriff’s Association, as a board member of the CPOA, and longtime member of the POST Commission. Since 2003, he’s also had a high-profile role as dean at the Golden West Community College Criminal Justice Training Center. Located in Huntington Beach, where Lowenberg served as police chief from 1989 to 2002, the center is one of the few certified regional criminal justice training centers in the West that serves in excess of 2500 trainees in an academic year. Now, Lowenberg is blazing a new trail in state law enforcement by teaming up with public and private institutions to enhance school safety. Keeping America’s schoolchildren safe has been a topic of increasing concern in an era of horrific mass shootings, which come at a time when budget woes have resulted in cutbacks to SRO (school resource officer) programs across our nation. “We’re trying to fill a need with what used to be traditional ways of helping keep schools safe,” Lowenberg said of his partnership with Evidence Based Inc., a consulting firm founded by former Irvine police Officer John McLaughlin in 2003. This collaboration, initiated by McLaughlin and his partners to provide training to former law enforcement officers who are part of EBI’s new Campus Safety Program, provides risk-assessment services and systems to help courts, police agencies, schools and municipalities do their jobs better and reduce costs. McLaughlin and a team of about a dozen former peace officers aim to supplement existing School Resource Officers programs and expand the focus of security programs to include middle and elementary schools. The idea is to work directly with schools and police to identify and assess threats, prevent violence from occurring, provide mental health referrals and other services and respond quickly and decisively if and when incidents occur. McLaughlin and a founding partner in EBI, former Costa Mesa school-resource officer Jess Gilman, approached Lowenberg and his staff at the Golden West Community College Criminal Justice Training Center to create a special curriculum to train the Campus Safety Officers including existing and new municipal police School Resource Officers in weaponless defense techniques—as well as identifying and getting services to those with mental health issues. The curriculum has been developed and approved and the first class is scheduled to be presented in Spring ’14. Lowenberg believes this course will gain attention as a national model. Additional training partners include local school districts, the Orange Co. Health Care Agency, OC Department of Education, OC Intelligence Assessment Center (Critical Infrastructure Protection Unit), OC Shields (Higher Education Working Group), FBI InfraGard (Education Sector), to name a few. Lowenberg, who also served as police chief for the City of Cypress from 1981 to 1989, interim chief in Pomona 2002-03, says finding new ways to prepare new officers for today’s realities - and finding new ways to help current officers improve is exciting and very rewarding. “We are training these former officers to apply the knowledge and skills they have learned to a different setting,” he said. “They have a skill set that allows them to quickly recognize potential problems and pull in the necessary resources to prevent serious problems from erupting.” The curriculum developed by the GWC CJTC is part of a 40-hour course. The Golden West Community College Criminal Justice Training Center has more than 160 adjunct faculty members with a variety of expertise in criminal justice and public safety. “What we are doing is taking school threat assessment and response to the next level,” Lowenberg says. “It’s a proactive approach to campus safety, and we have the resources here at our center to provide the appropriate training.” ■ SPRING 2014 | California Police Chief 21