A Day in the Life of Harvard's Chief Cop

A TALL MAN in a trenchcoat swings a Marianne Moore poetry book at his side and disappears into the Grays Hall basement to begin his day's work. After greeting the men in his department, he proceeds to his office and turns on the radio to a jazz music station.

Robert Tonis, Chief of the University Police, then begins opening the morning mail while his secretary, Alice McInnis, fixes him his first cup of morning coffee. As he reads the police log of the previous night, one of his six freshman advisees drops by and begins to ask Tonis for counsel on the best way to combat roommate fatigue.

The Chief, who has four children of his own, listens patiently and, within an hour, the freshman emerges from the hidden doorway to face the University once again.

At 10:30 a.m., Tonis meets in his office with Archibald Cox and CFIA officials. Again the subject is security measures for the Center. And again Tonis maintains the most level head, alternately assuring and chiding the anxiety-filled men.

By the time Cox is satisfied that the CFIA will still be standing tomorrow, it is almost noon. Tonis leaves his office, not for lunch, but for the Fine Arts 13 course which he is taking. It is his policy to audit a course every semester, but this is a somewhat curious departure from the usual fare of literature, history, and religion courses.

After filing out of the Fogg Museum, he strides over to the Signet Society, a literary club of which he is an honorary member.

Between tales of chasing Nazi "spies" through the ubiquitous steam tunnels and helping George Wallace escape from Memorial Hall in 1964, he has little time to eat.

"Wallace sent a couple of state troopers up to check things out the week before he came and we tried to show them the tunnels in case there was any trouble," he recalls.

"But they weren't interested. So the night of the speech, Mem Hall was surrounded by about 1500 protesters and Wallace started speaking. The troopers were standing off in the background with their shiny pistols hitched to their hips and were getting a little worried now because the boos were growing louder. About halfway through, one starts coming over to me looking like he wants to shoot his way out. But he says, 'Mr. Tonis, ah believe we'd be interested in takin' a look at those tunnels you mentioned.'"

So go the stories of Harvard cops and robbers, punctuated with bits of dialogue, pieces of personal remembrances and a good-humored overview.

A Mather House sophomore breaks into his own tale of the drop-out pusher who has settled into his living room and now brings a steady parade of townies in.

The Chief bends over a little more concerned now, but the student quickly adds that the roommates don't mind, and Tonis breaks into a chuckle, "Well, I'll be darned!"

Following lunch, Tonis checks in at Adams House, where this year he became an Associate. Quincy and Mather Houses had vied for him unsuccessfully.

At Adams, Tonis accepts an invitation for a House dinner. As he proceeds back up Plympton Street, he stops at the venerable Grolier Book Shop.

Returning to Grays Hall, Tonis prepares for a 2:30 p.m. appointment with a job applicant. He does all his own interviewing and hiring. When he took over in March, 1962, there were no blacks on the force. Today, 11 of the 73 men are black. Of the 13 sergeants, there are black. Another black, Lieutenant Theodore Thompson, does plainclothes work and is the number three man on the force.

"We think of ourselves as public relations men, not policemen," Tonis emphasizes while talking to the prospective patrolman. There are no formal requirements to be a Harvard policeman and there is no special training program. The men simply have to be of Tonis' liking and seem willing to view their role as helping the students instead of legalistically enforcing the law. To date, Harvard police have never arrested anyone affiliated with the University.

There is no special firearms program. Staff officers simply accompany the new recruits to the University rifle range and teach the men how to use a pistol.

They shoot 20 rounds at a silhouette and give the target to Tonis, who scrutinizies the results and decides whether they qualify. They keep shooting until they get Tonis' approval, but this is all a little superfluous when you realize that Harvard police have only fired their guns on two occasions in the last 20 years.

Even this modest program, though, is a vast improvement over the pre-Tonis conditions. When Tonis took over the police, the men were carrying a variety of outdated pistols. In his first month, Tonis tried firing one pistol, but it jammed and he had to remove the clogged bullet from the gun with his pocket jackknife.

During the past eight and one-half years, Tonis has modernized the force and professionalized it within clearly defined limits. But Tonis said he would consider it a personal failure if he ever has to order a batch of riot gear for his men, as some university police forces have done.

A SERGEANT expressed the prevailing attitude on the force: "This is the main thing. You've got to like people. You can't use words to somebody you wouldn't want to be used to you." A patrolman seconded his appraisal, "If you can't get along and communicate with the kids, it's no job. If a boy goes to this college, there must have been some screening and he must be a pretty nice kid."

There seems to be a difference in attitude between the men working under Tonis for at least five years or so, and some of the younger recruits. One veteran sergeant said, "All the young guys, if they want to be policemen, they'd better try the regular police."

"Here, you've really got to be a little more tactful," he added. "Some young guys won't last. Some new guys figure that [being courteous] is wiping somebody's fanny."

One "new blood" patrolman suggested that the department buy riot equipment, establish a tactical squad and create an intelligence division-ideas which Tonis abhors. The patrolman also suggested bolstering the force from 73 to 100 men.

"It's just a matter of participating," he said. "Everything that happens, we call Cambridge. Cambridge has enough problems of its own." A few months ago the patrolman got his riot gear, his tactical squad and intelligence support-through his new job with the Cambridge police.

Tonis predicts that if gung-ho recruits do not mellow, they will not last long on the Harvard police.

The two major problems with which the Harvard police contend are assaults on woman students and thefts in the Houses. This semester, at least two rapes have been reported. In response, the Harvard police have established an extra detail for Radcliffe's Currier House and have gotten the Cambridge police to deploy an extra 5 to 15 men in the general Radcliffe area.

"Radcliffe couldn't have any more protection than it has right now from the Cambridge police; the place is swarming with them," said Sergeant John Miller, one of the three Harvard beat patrolmen there.

A few weeks ago, under the interrogation of Harvard Lt. Thompson, a trespasser caught in Lowell House named members of a suspected ring of thieves. Boston and Cambridge police proceeded to make the appropriate arrests and have already recovered thousands of dollars worth of property stolen from Harvard Houses.

A sergeant in a marked Harvard police cruiser and two patrolmen are always stationed at Radcliffe, whose security the Harvard police took over in 1965. Another sergeant drives a marked cruiser in the Harvard area, and is responsible for five patrolmen, except from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., the peak period, when he is responsible for seven men.

The foot patrolmen are the backbone of the Harvard police and their function seems to be similar to that of night watchmen in the Houses, with two important differences. The men are mobile rather than stationary, and each man is armed with a 38 Smith and Wesson revolver, a billy club, and handcuffs.

THE MOST critical piece of technology for any police department, including the Harvard police, is communications. In the past, there used to be a red blinking-light alarm system. A patrolman, if he saw the red light blinking at the corner of a building, would immediately telephone headquarters. The men would also phone in routinely every half hour. But about five years ago, a one-way radio system was introduced whereby the men could receive messages from headquarters.

The one-way radio system, however, had its flaws. Reception was so uncertain that the officer at the desk usually radioed individual patrolmen and requested that they telephone headquarters for instructions, because relaying messages by radio could be too risky. The patrolman's telephoning confirmed the fact that he heard the radio call.

Most Harvard police members felt that two-way radios with better reception would be an excellent investment, and last month, a two-way radio system went into effect.

During the daytime, the Harvard police will be relying increasingly upon alarm systems being established in all the Harvard buildings. The alarms are buttons which, when pushed, will light up the "big board" at headquarters. More than 25 such alarms have already been installed. There are, for example, three in University Hall and one in Massachusetts Hall.

Such technical improvements often fall at the bottom of the financial ladder, however, because Tonis' emphasis has always been on personnel over equipment. "Except for wages, we run on a shoestring," he said.

In the last ten years, beginning patrolmen's wages have doubled. The number of applicants greatly outnumbers the available jobs, and, although the Cambridge police force offers the second highest police salaries in the state, the turnover of Harvard police remains low.

Northeastern University School of Criminal Justice offers courses free to Harvard police. When University police dominated two of the classes, both were moved over to Cambridge.

Tonis himself graduated from Dartmouth and spent 27 years with the FBI before coming to head the Harvard police in '62. For eight years his easy-going ways have given a relaxed but competent tone to the Harvard police department, and there's no reason to think it won't continue.