Jeff McCracken began working for the University’s police department in 1993 and has been there ever since. Now, in his seventh year as Chief of Police and Director of Public Safety, McCracken is leading the department through improvements to Alert Carolina, changes to the parking system and much more. One theme ran consistent throughout his interview — many opinions about his department, even those that sometimes are found on this page, do not take into account the harsh realities of a bureaucracy.
Alert Carolina’s timeliness in delivering emails and text messages is constantly improving. Earlier this month, the police department was able to use its new adverse weather notification system for the first time during a tornado warning. Everything went smoothly; in addition to the sirens, a text message sent out to 42,000 recipients was received by about 85 percent of them in just more than three minutes. This is a far cry from the Alert Carolina of yesteryears — a seemingly slow and tardy system. Even so, McCracken knows there is always room for improvement.
“We always review the emergency communication and the emergency response plans after every incident to see if there are areas that we can improve in. There will always be changes in technology and the ability we have to communicate.”
In contrast to the success of Alert Carolina, many members of the UNC community are frustrated with the Department of Public Safety’s addition of parking fees. This year, a fee was added for use of park-and-ride lots, and next August a similar fee will go into effect for nighttime parking. However, these seem to be necessary evils in order to support a greater transportation system.
“Nobody’s happy when you ask them to pay money, but the reality is that our campus is structured in such a way that we cannot operate without public transportation,” he said.
The department always solicits public input. But it’s impossible to please everyone; McCracken knows that it’s not an easy situation when “we have far less parking than we do people.”
McCracken cites the fire in Cobb Residence Hall as the most stressful event he’s had to deal with this past semester. Because the University doesn’t usually face serious fires, the Cobb fire offered an atypical situation and a demanding response from all involved.
“When you have an incident like that, people generally just think about the response to the fire, they don’t really think a whole lot about the recovery phase that comes after that. There’s a whole lot of work that goes into investigating the cause of the fire, getting the building ready to be occupied – what do you do with the people during that time?”
As always, the police department is committed to student safety, which is inevitably tied to underage drinking. McCracken recently met with other campus police chiefs to share ideas about how to address this problem.
