College of The Albemarle hires its first security chief

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C.

Murder, a bomb threat and a student with an assault weapon.

The three incidents on three different campuses here in the past two years prompted one small community college to hire its first head of security.

"You hate to have to do it, but these days, you can't afford not to do it," said Roger Lambertson, chairman of the Board of Trustees for the College of The Albemarle.

New security chief Joseph DeStefano plans to make recommendations soon to school officials on how to beef up protection of the 75-acre, 10-building campus and its 3,200 students.

The state's first community college, founded in 1961, will remain accommodating, DeStefano said.

"We've got to balance the rights of students and visitors with maintaining a safe environment," he said.

DeStefano's law enforcement resume goes back to his years as a Marine Corps military policeman in the 1980s. He worked more than 10 years as a Suffolk police officer. For the past 12 years, he has led the college's basic law enforcement school. His education includes a master's degree in criminal justice.

Currently, the school has seven unarmed part-time security guards. An emergency text message system is optional, but plans are to change that so that students are automatically enrolled unless they opt out.

DeStefano's duties will also cover satellite campuses in Dare and Chowan counties and eventually an aircraft maintenance training center proposed in Currituck County.

North Carolina colleges reported one murder from 2008 through 2010, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Education. The murder happened on the campus of Mid-Atlantic Christian University in Elizabeth City in 2010, when one student shot another in a dorm room.

In October, a woman was arrested after she sent an email to the College of The Albemarle that was threatening enough to cause President Kandi Deitemeyer to evacuate the campus. In November, a man walked onto the campus of Elizabeth City State University with an assault weapon. Campus police shot him and later found a man wounded in a nearby wooded area.

After the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, the North Carolina Department of Justice appointed a task force to study campus violence and make recommendations. DeStefano will be looking at those recommendations as he pulls together a plan for the College of The Albemarle, he said.

Among the task force recommendations:

• Establish a threat-assessment team to review warning signs of possible troubled students.

Studies on school shootings show that three of four perpetrators planned the incident and left clues and shared information with someone beforehand. Attacks are rarely impulsive. Mental health records can be shared when health and safety is involved, according to the report.

• Establish a mutual-aid agreement with local law enforcement.

Only two of 10 North Carolina community colleges have mutual-aid agreements with local law enforcement. The College of The Abermarle works with the Elizabeth City Police Department.

• Set up radio communications between campus security and local police. DeStefano can talk by radio with the local central communications.