Jordan Plowman
Lantern Staff
As of the last Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 14, the Butler Community College campus police now have jurisdiction over the Villas.
Jason Kenney, chief of police for Butler Community College, and Curt Zieman, chief of El Dorado police, signed A Memorandum of Understanding, (MOU).
The idea was first proposed after the alleged sexual assaults and concerns to have a quicker response time began to rise.
“It is something I have worked on for awhile,” Kenney said. “We started getting negative attention through the media…Actually, the managing company initially sent a letter to Bill Rinkenbaugh, [me] and the city manager wanting us to have jurisdiction and that is not quite how it works…So, the letter from the management company kinda of prompted it and I drafted the MOU and sent it off for approval by the El Dorado City Police and our Board of Trustees.”
Campus police will respond and monitor at El Dorado and Augusta Butler Campus, BG Stadiums and the Villas. Each location has an office set up in it to respond quickly.
“Any calls for service that happen at the Villas, we will now be included in on,” Kenney said. “The dispatched 911 call will include us in on those calls either as the primary or secondary. We hear it. We will respond and go that way.”
Campus police have brought the crime rate down since installing a professional and personal relationship with the students living at the Villas and having the availability of being right there.
“We know everybody over there,” Kenney said. “They are all Butler students. It is a privately owned company, but it is 100% Butler students there. So when El Dorado walks up with a noise complaint or whatever, they do not get an answer. When we walk up and knock, we are also going to call out a name because we know who is in there. We are a little more invested and interested in what is going on in there to keep our kids safe.”
Since the widening of the Campus Police’s scope, students have voiced mixed reviews.
“I feel like everyone is grown,” Linesia Thompson, freshman liberal arts major said. “We should have our privacy, but then again you have to take the opposite view. There are things going on over there fighting, drinking and smoking which is wrong. So, I feel like it is good and bad both ways.”
If you need help, no matter where you are, the Butler Community College Police urge you to call at (316) 312-7657 or use the GrizzlySafe app.
