UCLA creates high-level post to oversee campus safety after security lapses in mob attack

UCLA has moved swiftly to create a new chief safety officer position to oversee campus security operations, including the police department, in the wake of what have been called serious lapses in handling protests that culminated in a mob attack on a pro-Palestinian student encampment last week.

Chancellor Gene Block announced Sunday that Rick Braziel, a former Sacramento police chief who has reviewed law enforcement responses in high-profile cases across the country, will serve as associate vice chancellor of a new Office of Campus Safety. He will oversee the Police Department — including Police Chief John Thomas, who is facing calls to step aside — and the Office of Emergency Management.

Braziel previously was tapped to review police actions in the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting; riots in Ferguson, Mo.; the shootout with former-LAPD-officer-turned-police-killer Christopher Dorner; and other cases. He will report directly to Block in a unit that will focus solely on campus safety — an arrangement that has proved effective at major universities across the country, the chancellor said. Previously, the campus police chief and the Office of Emergency Management reported to Administrative Vice Chancellor Michael Beck.

Block also announced a new advisory group to partner with Braziel. Members include UC Davis Police Chief Joseph Farrow, the respected chair of the UC Council of Police Chiefs; Vickie Mays, UCLA professor of psychology and health policy and management; and Jody Stiger, UC systemwide director of community safety.

"Protecting the safety of our community underpins everything we do at UCLA. In the past week, our campus has been shaken by events that have disturbed this sense of safety and strained trust within our community," Block said in a message to the campus community. "One thing is already clear: to best protect our community moving forward, urgent changes are needed in how we administer safety operations.

"The well-being of our students, faculty and staff is paramount."

The move is intended to immediately address campus security shortfalls that left UCLA students and others involved in the protest encampment to fend for themselves against attackers for three hours before law enforcement moved in to quell the melee.

Three sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly, told the Los Angeles Times that Thomas failed to provide a repeatedly requested written security plan to campus leadership on how he planned to keep the campus safe in various scenarios, including rallies, skirmishes and violence. He failed to secure external law enforcement to assist UCLA police and private security in safeguarding the encampment area before the mob attack, despite authorization to do so with as much overtime payment as needed, the sources said.

Thomas also assured leadership that it would take just "minutes" to mobilize law enforcement to quell violence. It actually took three hours to assemble enough officers before they moved in to intervene.

Thomas, in an interview late Friday night, disputed that account as inaccurate and said he did "everything I could" to safeguard the community in a week of strife that left UCLA reeling.

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