East Lansing Sgt. Nancy Hamilton spent eight of her 11 years with the East Lansing Police Department working with the canine patrol.
Now she’s handling a completely different kind of animal - students.
On top of her regular road-patrol duties, Hamilton will serve as the student alliance coordinator, a position created to improve relations between MSU students and police.
“This is to try to get students familiar with officers,” Hamilton said. “It sometimes helps prevent crime or incidents that happen because we have had time to educate students and get to know them.”
The student alliance officer position held by Officer Larry Sparkes was eliminated this summer after a year of high costs, forcing East Lansing officials to cut $325,000 from the budget.
But City Manager Ted Staton said there was never any intention to eliminate the city’s alliance between students and police.
“I think it was misportrayed as the city abandoning this effort,” he said. “Clearly, budget played a role, but more than anything else, we were trying to institutionalize the connection with student groups through more than one officer.
“It’s a much bigger effort than one police officer can do.”
Instead of one officer attending meetings with student groups, Hamilton will be responsible for coordinating efforts between several different officers.
“It kind of gives the other officers a chance to interact with the student on a more personable level instead of reacting to crime,” Hamilton said. “There were a lot of people upset when Larry’s position was eliminated. He’d done a lot of work and cut down a lot of barriers. I’d hate to see that fall back to where it was before.”
The original student alliance officer position was created after the March 27-28, 1999, riot after the men’s basketball team’s loss to Duke. More than 10,000 people flooded city streets, ending in more than 130 arrests and $250,000 in damages to the city and university.
East Lansing Capt. Juli Liebler said the duties once held by the officer will be spread among about 35 officers and eight supervisors.
“We will have more officers performing the same function,” she said. “This is a way to combine all that and effectively use our resources.”
Interfraternity Council President Josh Tudor, a political theory and constitutional democracy senior, said the change in the position will serve the student community better than with only one officer.
Tudor said he is expecting the same level of participation with the 29 fraternities and 15 sororities in the council. Each of the groups had interacted with the student alliance officer in the past.
“They’ll still have that point contact person, but they’ll have a better chance to meet more officers,” Tudor said.
Hamilton will meet with student groups at various locations on the third Monday of every month.
“The students do have a lot of questions about the laws and ordinances, so we’re there to help with that,” she said. “We’re going to try to make them realize that we’re not the bad guy here.”
