As Plymouth State moves into a new year of academics and students settle back into university life, new University Police Chief Richard Bailey is becoming a well-known face on campus and that is exactly what he wants.
Going into his 38th year in law enforcement, Bailey’s vast amount of knowledge and experience in police work spans all levels of serving his community. He has earned his Bachelor’s degree in Business Management, and a Master’s degree in Criminal Justice. For over 26 years he worked for the Nashua Police Department doing everything from “working from the patrol level all the way up to a detective. [He] worked with undercover drugs and prosecuting cases in the district court.” He also worked closely with surrounding schools and became acquainted with college police forces, “I was involved with three colleges in Nashua and had a lot of interaction with them, and the security in and around them, ” said Bailey.
After retiring from Nashua as a captain nearly 12 years ago, Bailey went to work as the Chief of Police in Grafton, Massachusetts. For the past eight years, Bailey has been working around the country as a public safety consultant. It was his work as Assistant Director of Public Safety Strategies Group that brought him to Plymouth. UPD had no chief at the time, so while he was consulting with our officers, “one thing led to the next and here I am,” he explained.
Bailey’s main focus while serving at UPD is to have the officers become more involved with the community. He knows from experience that this is an important aspect of serving and protecting a community of any size:
“I’ve always interacted with the community. I was big into coaching youth sports, worked on a domestic violence task force, all those types of interactions with the community,” explained Bailey, “I think if you don’t do that you don’t know the community, and if you don’t know the community, how do you police the community?”
In order to achieve this goal, Bailey is taking the necessary steps with our officers on campus to become a part of every day life.
“I know you’ll see more of us this year. One of my biggest priorities is to have the officers out of the offices, out of the cruisers, and walking through the University community…in the buildings and the dorms interacting with the resident directors and the community advisors,” said Bailey.
“It may be a little unusual as first to see a police officer walking down the hallway, but the whole philosophy behind that is that we are going to go places in bad times, we’re going to get called,” said Bailey, “but it’s so much easier in those types of situations when you can put a name to a face. You will know from your interactions with me that I’m doing things for the right reasons.”
Another reason Bailey believes that boosting student-officer interactions will benefit our campus is in situations where students could interfere on behalf of a friend who might be at risk of getting arrested.
“Maybe when somebody has had too many drinks and is not cooperating-through peer pressure somebody can stand up and tell them to knock it off…sometimes that helps. In the middle of a crisis if we have never met, people probably aren’t going to do that,” explained Bailey, “What happens will happen, but with that kind of peer pressure a lot of the time it won’t get the point where we have to arrest someone.”
In this technologically dependent world we live in, police records are not hard to search for anymore. “Sometimes we don’t think before we do things…If you get in trouble these days, those things follow you for the rest of your life, you can’t get away from it,” warned Chief Bailey.
“I think our mission of the police department should mirror the mission of the university, and that is to help get students through this process and out in the world with an education, with good experiences-life experiences-and opportunities that make them better candidates for jobs. We’re a big part of that. Decisions we make can affect a student for the rest of their life. Their decisions require us to make decisions,” said Bailey.
“I know from experience in a lot of hiring processes you can have two people who are so close. One of them may just have something very simple in their background that normally wouldn’t hurt them in an interview process, but when it gets to the point where you’ve got two choices, those simple things can become a big deal, and you won’t get that job and you’ll probably never know that was the reason,” explained Bailey.
Bailey’s life experience has given him a very realistic view of what the college experience should be for students here at PSU, “We want students to have fun. This should be an overall experience. It shouldn’t be just educational, it should be everything. It’s a good time to grow up and grow into adulthood and realize the responsibilities of it, and we need to be part of that.”
With so many opportunities for students to excel in school while having a great time outside of the classroom, Bailey urged students to be adventurous in our beautiful surroundings, “I think if people don’t take advantage of nature around here they’re missing an opportunity to live up here for four years and not partake in the nature. As a kid I had to drive two or three hours to get here.”
His commute is still quite the haul up the highway. He lives in Lyndeborough, N.H., a small town close to Peterborough much like Plymouth, but with even less of a population. Already a grandfather of one, he is expecting his second grandchild next month.
Bailey still enjoys hiking and skiing and is looking forward to hitting the slopes this season. “One of the nice things in law enforcement is you generally work the weekends so you have time off during the week to do it.”
One of the greatest parts of living in Plymouth is the food, and Bailey has been exploring downtown and hasn’t found one place he didn’t like.
If University Police follows his examples of immersing into the community more and building a stronger relationship with the students, it seems there will be more of an attitude of respect for the officers and what they do, rather than associating them with fear and trouble.
“I want us to be held accountable for what we are supposed to do and what we say were going to do. If don’t see us walking around and in buildings then I would like to know. You’ll see me but I shouldn’t be the only person that you see,” explained Bailey.
Students should make the effort to build positive relationships with UPD as well, there is a lot to be learned from what they have encountered in their lives about how to handle situations that can arise.
“We have a lot of life experience. We’ve seen in our lifetime things that most people don’t. I’ve seen a lot of people ruin their lives on stupid things. More importantly I’ve seen a lot of people stand by and not do anything about it. They either didn’t know what to do or didn’t want to get involved, but sometimes you need your friends to talk you down and walk you away. The last thing we want to do is arrest somebody. Obviously that will happen, but hopefully it doesn’t happen often,” said Bailey.
With Chief Bailey in a position to make positive change, he has already set his plan in motion, and hopefully it will prove to be beneficial to students, faculty, and the extended Plymouth community.
“I want the university community to know us and know what we do,” Bailey said, “So if you see a police officer say ‘hi’, try to interact with us, I think it’s important.”