First candidate for KU police chief: Transparency, accountability key to campus reform

For Terence Calloway, reforming a university police department takes a multifaceted effort.

A campus community needs to be educated about policing practices both good and bad, the department must be transparent with that community, and the two groups needs to have a productive and ongoing dialogue to best work together, Calloway said in a virtual presentation Wednesday.

He’s one of three finalists to take over as chief of KU’s Public Safety Office after current chief Chris Keary announced internally that he planned to retire this year. Each candidate to replace Keary was asked to deliver a campus presentation on “Police Reform on a University Campus.”

“(It) starts with leadership from the top. Addressing and giving expectations of what the community expects of us, and understanding and realizing you do have a job because of the students. And without students, many of us wouldn’t have a job,” Calloway said.

“So it becomes very important that you set the standard of what you’re trying to accomplish,” he continued. “That means getting out of the car, establishing borders with these students, faculty and staff, going through cafeterias, eating lunch with them, going to different kinds of programs that they’re in, but also inviting them to your program and undergoing collaborative efforts to make sure that we’re on the same page.”

Calloway also emphasized that if he were to take over as leader of KU PSO, he wants to meet with local and state law enforcement officials as well as campus groups to gauge what direction the community feels the department needs to move in. Then, a year into the job, he’d want to conduct a campuswide survey to see if the community felt progress had been made.

“Even that small amount of success is driving to the next amount of success,” he said. “So if we’re better than where we were in June, 2021, and we’re better in June, 2022, we’ve made some progress. But we have to build on that and continue to do it.”

Calloway currently serves as chief of police and assistant vice president of campus safety and security at Florida A&M University. He took that role in 2013 after serving as chief of police at Austin Peay State University from January 2012 to June 2013, and as chief of police for the Village of Woodmere, Ohio, from January 2010 to January 2012.

On Thursday, Nelson Mosely will present his version of reforming police practices on a university campus as the second of three finalists. Mosely currently serves as the police chief of Rose Hill, just southeast of Wichita, and joined the Rose Hill Police Department in July 2016, spending much of his career before that in Wichita PD.

Here’s the virtual presentation schedule:

• 1-2 p.m. Thursday, Nelson Mosley: Register here

• 1:45-2:45 p.m. Friday, Candidate 3 (to be named publicly Thursday): Register here

Registration is required for all presentation viewers, and participation in each presentation will be limited to the first 300 registrants, KU said. Questions from viewers will be moderated and presented by search committee members.

Members of the KU community are encouraged to provide feedback on all three candidates by June 13 via the search committee website, where videos of each candidate’s presentation will be posted after all are completed.