A New Chief for Harvard's Troubled Police

Chief Saul I. Chafin arrived at Harvard this June to head a University police department still reeling from the extensive innovations of his predecessor, former police chief David L. Gorski. The old chief resigned amid controversy over a year ago, leaving police morale at an all-time low. Most of Harvard's 42 patrolmen worried, with good reason, about the future of the force, and with that their own jobs. Harvard, they feared, was out to cut the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) down to nothing but security guards. Gorski's organizational reforms made many cops wonder whether their ten or 15 years on the force would amount to no more than a pink slip.

Those questions remain, but the threat of a sizing down of the force seems less ominous since Chafin's arrival. Patrolmen are, by and large, taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the department and its latest addition. Chafin, in turn, has asked for time to work out the problems existing within the department, and the members of the Harvard Police Association (HPA), the union representing the Harvard patrolmen, are giving him just that.

Chafin, a black, 41-year-old former Hartford, Conn. police officer, joined Harvard in June after a six-year stint (including one year as director of security) with the department of public safety at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. A seven-member committee of administrators, professors, the acting police chief and a student at the Law School chose Chafin from a pool of 200 applicants one year after the position was vacated. Joe B. Wvatt, vice president for administration and a member of the search committee, says the committee selected Chafin because of his blend of urban and university police experience, each of which earned him impressive recommendations. "In his interviews, he demonstrated that he was both sincere and able: a listener and a doer," Wyatt adds.

Chafin sits in his Grays Hall office, puffing on a cigar and contemplating his new surroundings. He is careful about his choice of words, only too aware that he is walking the proverbial tightrope; he has to please his new employers, but still work at assuring the members of the department that he will look out for them. He says the job is a challenge to him, not only because of the University's urban setting, but also because he must strive to improve the morale of the department.

Chafin plans to correct some of the present policies at the HUPD, in what he calls an effort to realize the full potential of the department's personnel and other resources. He is pleased, he says, with the complement of personnel in the department, especially the extent of experience and technical training of many of its members. He is also impressed by what he sees as the members' eagerness to develop supervisory, investigative and human relations skills.

"I immediately set out to improve the morale in the department by individual contacts with personnel," Chafin says, adding he considers this one of his top priorities. He sat down with each member of the department when he first arrived to emphasize the importance of continued cooperation and communication between the front office and patrolmen. That contact was one key ingredient that, Chafin says, he noticed lacking within the department when he arrived. To correct this lack, Chafin says he will consult all members of the department prior to making major decisions, whenever possible. "My management approach is to ask for input right down the line of the best way, within reason, to accomplish a given task," he explains.

Chafin says he will not allow lines of communication to be "truncated by middle-management personnel," adding he hopes to remain in constant communication with the patrolmen.

Chafin followed the meeting with force members by riding in difference police cruisers for a full month. "That way," he says, "when the patrolmen speak to an issue, I'll have some sense of what they're talking about." He says he will cruise with the patrolmen again once most students have returned in the fall.

The elimination of the stress test is another welcomed "correction" of Chafin's new administration. The union vigorously opposed the implementation of the test, which registers physical reactions under artifical stress, during the contract negotiations last fall. HPA negotiators faulted the test for its rigidity: the patrolmen argued that the test exaggerates every small physical problem, and might be used as an excuse for disqualifying basically fit patrolmen from active duty. Harvard included the test in the contract but agreed to delay implementation until July 1979. Chafin says, however, that it will not be implemented.

Included in his scope of "corections" is a plan to send one of the department's lieutenants to a three-week intensive command supervisory training course at the Command Training Institute at Babson College. This opportunity, Chafin says, was never before open to the University police; he says he plans to send all newly appointed supervisory personnel to the Institute in the future.

Chafin says he plans to develop a "new promotional mode" in the department. Candidates for promotion will first have to take a written examination prepared by an outside agency, and then go through a follow-up oral examination. The new chief also expects to fill a few patrolmen's jobs in the near future, a move that will likely please the several patrolmen who last spring wondered why the police administration never bothered to fill the vacancies that occurred during the Gorski administration. Patrolman James P. Sullivan explained last June that when Gorski entered the department, he claimed he would reduce the size of the force; over the next three years the force diminished by 30 per cent, mainly through attrition and rigid physical requirements. Chafin's new policy may well relieve some of the union's gripes.

Women are among the new "policepersons" Chafin plans to recruit. The department does not presently have any women within its officer corps. In addition, the police department will require not only written, oral and physical examinations for new candidates, but will add a psychological examination administered by a qualified psychologist.

To counter patrolmen's complaints about having to rotate their assignments every three months, Chafin decided to implement a one-year minimum assignment policy. He hopes this will allow officers a chance to develop more personal contacts with members of the community, and also help officers to become familiar with a particular area--"so they feel they are a part of it, not apart from it."

Chafin hopes that the minimal reorganization he plans will help ease the officers' worried over their job security. "You want people to function, and they're all walking on eggshells," he says.

Chafin, who gained a reputation at UMass for his support of the patrolmen's union, says he will fight for his personnel whenever they are right. But, he adds, he will not hesitate to reprimand officers if he believes they are in the wrong--in his first week here, Chafin disciplined three officers.

Though initial reactions toward Chafin seem favorable, the police officers are still hesitant to pass judgment on their new chief. Some doubt that Chafin will be able to change his predecessor's policies, simply because Harvard wants it that way. "What are we to think when, the night after Gorski resigned, the union officials are called to a quick meeting at personnel, where we were informed that they have adopted Gorski's policies?" Laurence F. Letteri, president of the HPA, asks. Skepticism remains.

Despite the hesitancy, the officers have not reacted against the "corrections" Chafin has instituted. What remains to be seen is whether the University administration will give him the leeway he needs for close cooperation with members of his department.