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
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