ORU Implementing Training Program For Campus Security Officers

The U.S. Department of Education says campus crime dropped every year between 2005 and 2014.

The bad news, however, is that campuses still reported more than 50,000 crimes last year.

Crimes of all kind can happen on college campuses, so the need is great for better trained, higher qualified security officers and police officers.

Steve Hinkle works for ORU security in Tulsa. He’s a CLEET certified officer with more than 20 years of law enforcement experience, but he’s also now the first state certified trainer, meaning he can now train the other three dozen officers on the campus as well.

"On any given day, we have 3,000 to 5,000 people here, so it's like a small city," Hinkle said.

Phase one of his twice-a-month training will be the Violence Prevention Initiative.

"I teach the officers to better protect themselves when they respond to a call and, as a result, they can better protect others at the ORU campus," he said.

Phase two of his training will be to create an active shooter protocol - something the times require but they hope to never use.

Hinkle said, "The violent times demand additional training and specialized training to increase the officer's survivability, which lets them get where they need to go safety and stop the violence from continuing."

The goal is that after phase one and phase two of the training everyone on campus – the faculty, students and their parents - will feel safer.