LUPD chief Goodrich seeks to ‘set the tone’

Editor's note: This is part one of a three-part series on LU's police department.

Dallas native Jason Goodrich has traveled the country searching for "something better." With a plethora of goals set for himself, Lamar University's new chief of police has come to campus to fulfill his desire to always improve.

Basically, I am the big picture person for the direction of the police department," Goodrich said. "I look at policies and procedures — are we in compliance nationally with best practices? I set the tone and direction of how we do enforcement, how we work with students, how we work with the neighborhood. It's a balancing job of service vs. enforcement, so I make sure we meet that tone correctly.

"Then there's all manner of compliance issues — federal laws that we have to comply with — mass notification, emergency management issues, things like that, so I get to direct all that. Title IX has been kind of the big thing recently that we've been working, making sure we're compliant with all the Title IX implications of sexual assault, sexual harassment and equality issues."

Goodrich came to Lamar on Sept. 13 from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., where he was a captain of the fourth-largest police department in Tennessee for four and a half years.

"When I started, we had 115 officers," he said. "There are about 12,000 students, but with the Medical Center, it's crazy. The Medical Center had 22,000 employees alone. We had a million people in and out every day just for the medical stuff, so that's why they had such a big police department.

"(The size of a university) increases your special events. You get a certain level of traffic in and out, and more people who are on campus continually — whether it's staff, faculty, more student housing, things like that. It all affects your staffing level and your call volume."

Goodrich was briefly the chief of police at Indiana University Southeast. Previous to that, he was chief of police at Southern Arkansas University, and he started his career at the University of Arkansas, in Fayetteville where he got his undergraduate degree in criminal justice.

Goodrich said that he had different plans when he graduated, but that campus policing is a good fit.

"My dad is in law enforcement, and my mom is a school teacher," he said. "I wanted to be an FBI agent, and before you can apply with the FBI you have to have three years of work experience. So I was like, ‘Alright, I've got to be a cop for three years. Then I'll go work for the FBI.'

"So I graduated, and the campus police was hiring, so I took a job with them. I found that it really matched both of my parents' skill sets. We get to do the law enforcement, but we also got to do the education piece in working with students and working with the crime prevention elements, the educational piece of campus law enforcement that really municipal agencies don't get to do. And I found I really enjoyed that."

In January 2011, Goodrich started at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn., working for a master's degree in conflict management.

"It's basically alternative dispute resolutions," Goodrich said. "We talk a lot about negotiating, mediating, facilitating — basically getting people to work past personal issues and get at the heart of what is the true dispute. Traditionally, in conflict, people look at position, and what really motivates conflict is interests. So if you can get people to look past positions and to look at their interests, there's usually a solution there that alleviates the conflict.

"It's a really intriguing field, and I had toyed around with getting a master's. There's a concept in education called ‘the ladder of learning.' The first step is basically unconscious incompetence. That's when you don't know something, and you have no idea that you don't know it. That's kind of how I was with conflict management. But you walk into this first class, and they start and you just go, ‘Wow. I had no idea you could do all that.'

"So I was really fascinated. I was like, ‘Alright, I've got to do this.' And it really applies on everything. There's conflict in everything. Just being able to strategically step aside from emotional connections or personal issues and be able to look at things as kind of holistic approach, and to train yourself to be able to do that, and to try and help other people be able to do that — it's really pretty fun."

Goodrich has one class and an externship project to complete before he graduates in May. Goodrich said he chose the externship project, because it incorporates the conflict management principles in a more practical way than a thesis.

"I have to spend 120 hours of work for somebody else, and then I have to write a 25-page paper about it," he said. "They have to come up with something for me to do, and I have to meet those expectations using what I've learned in the program to help them manage something."

Goodrich said that he would like to work with a friend in Portland, Ore. who does a lot of facilitation over salmon.

"There's a huge conflict over salmon between federal agencies, Native American tribes, commercial fisheries, the state of Washington and the state of Oregon," he said. "There's all kinds of interests, and basically, she facilitates all this conflict — manages this conflict. I'm hoping that I can plug in and do something with her, but I don't know if that's going to work yet or not.