OUT OF THE BLUE: A ride with the campus police

BY ELI MILCHMAN
Editor


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Sgt. Seligsohn goes through his list as he addresses the troops during the morning’s “line-up,” before leading the officers out on patrol. PHOTOS BY PETER VARSHAVSKY

They can be seen cruising purposefully around Cloud Circle in Ford Crown Victorias, or cycling the campus on specially equipped mountain bikes. For most students, contact with the 34 sworn officers of the San Francisco Community College District Police Department usually happens when something unpleasant occurs. The Guardsman recently rode along on patrol with the true guardsmen and women of Ocean campus for a closer look.

The men, about to begin their 8-hour shifts, seemed jovial as they gathered around 6:30 a.m. at the station in Cloud Hall for the day’s start.
“This is really to keep us caged in,” said an officer jokingly, as he pointed to the grill on the station door.

The station’s center — called the “everything room” because a recent fire had voided use of the station’s kitchen — plays host to “line-up,” a 15-minute police jargon-filled briefing. The real day began with a “Let’s do it, guys,” from Sgt. Michael Seligsohn.

Out by the cars, reporter chaperone Officer Chris Smith, a former student at City College, went through a siren and light check as Officer Todd Milowe talked about his job. “The most important thing we are trained to do is to go home safely,” Milowe said. “I want to go home. So far it’s worked.”

Smith’s giant cruiser rolled out of the station parking lot at about 7:10 a.m. and headed toward the reservoir. Smith said he recovers about two stolen vehicles each semester that have been left there.

Five minutes later, the first call crackled on the radio — another officer had stopped a driver for blowing through a stop sign on Phelan Avenue. Smith proceeded to provide backup for his comrade.

“Since we are unarmed, we use a little overkill,” Smith said, as his cruiser approached the other already on the scene.

Missing from Smith’s 20-pound utility belt is a gun. City College is one of the few colleges that fields an unarmed police force. Smith said he has no idea why the City College police are unarmed, and added that he’s taken knives off arrestees in the past.

“It’s not like we’re out here in la-la land … in some nice campus,” Smith said.

Perhaps because of this, Smith said that sometimes students are unsure of the officers’ status.

“I’ve had some guys say, ‘Oh, where are we going?’ ‘To the county jail.’ ‘You’re real police?’ ‘Yep, we’re real police.’ ”

A period of busy ease followed as the Crown Vic growled quietly and escorted Smith from task to task: a patrol of Cloud Circle and a ticket for someone ignoring another stop sign.

At 8:11 a.m. another call came in and Smith headed toward the scene, where Sgt. Seligsohn had pulled over a bright gold sports car.

“He’s not giving us a Code Four, so there’s something wrong here,” Smith said quietly, using the police vernacular for the equivalent of the all clear.

Ultimately, everything proved to be in order. The sergeant related what he had witnessed: A passenger got out of the car, moved one of the orange cones on Phelan Avenue to create a big enough gap for the car to get through, and got back in. Then the driver made an illegal U-turn and sped erratically down the street.

“We do traffic because people get crunched out here,” Seligsohn said, commenting on the safety of students just outside the campus.

Smith’s own first stop of the day came at 9:19 a.m., when he spotted a black BMW make an illegal U-turn on Ocean Avenue at Howth Street. He hit the lights and sounded a quick burst of the siren. The car pulled over immediately.

“Primarily I’m worried about officer safety,” Smith said about making stops. “Traffic can be more deadly than any suspect. A lot of cops die from that.”

The next one and a half hours were a whirlwind of activity: more stops, investigation of a possible attempted robbery at the Bookstore Annex the night before, a call to assist an instructor with a student and a woman helped onto a walker.

Halfway through Smith’s shift, it was time for The Guardsman to exit, and for lunch. No donut was involved.

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