HUPD Hires New Staff in Restructuring Effort

The appointment last week of two new senior administrators at the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) continues a department-wide restructuring begun a year ago.

Linda M. McCaul, a former Massachusetts corrections officer, will serve as HUPD's Associate Director of Operations, the department's third-highest ranking officer.

HUPD also hired Steven G. Catalano, a grants administrator and a Northeastern University criminologist, to administer crime prevention programs for Harvard.

Both McCaul and Catalano were lured to HUPD partly by Chief Francis D. "Bud" Riley.

Since his appointment as police chief in 1996, Riley has moved the department away from a traditional, reactive, crime-fighting force and towards a community-oriented, problem-solving force--a trend reflected by the backgrounds and ideologies of the new hires.

Both McCaul and Catalano will assume duties formerly performed by HUPD lieutenants, all seven of whom were fired last May amid a department-wide restructuring.

The Three P's

In an interview, McCaul said she was eager to further implement community policing.

"This is a wonderful opportunity to work with people I respect," McCaul said. "I know this is a good group of people."

As seen from the police's point of view, Harvard--a diverse community with diverse needs--poses special challenges: an open campus, located both in downtown Boston and Cambridge, and a multiracial student body of widely varying ages and backgrounds.

"There are so many reasons that this is a difficult and unique place to police," Catalano said.

Catalano, who served as a grant administrator for federal and local police agencies, said he wants to apply his expertise to Harvard.

"I see this as an opportunity to practice what I've been preaching [as a grant administrator]," he says.

The key to community policing, McCaul and Catalano said, is to focus on the three "p's": prevention, partnership and problem solving.

"It's vital that the police listen to the community's problems," Catalano says.

While it is too early for either Catalano or McCaul to know what they plan to do at HUPD, they both know they don't plan to suggest any major changes.

"The department is definitely headed in the right direction," McCaul says.

Cauling All Units

McCaul's career in law enforcement began on the campus of the University of Connecticut and then at Northeastern before beginning more than 20 years at the Massachusetts Department of Corrections. There, she served as director of investigations.

In her Garden Street office last Friday, select memorabilia from her career sat on the floor, ready for hanging.

One of the pictures is a photograph of McCaul and John Walsh, the host of Fox TV's America's Most Wanted, taken while she was working with the corrections department.

"We used that show a number of times successfully," she remembers.

McCaul has been honored for police work. She received a letter of commendation from the director of the FBI, Louis E. Freeh, for her help in an investigation of a 1994 New Hampshire armored car robbery.

McCaul earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Eastern Connecticut University and then joined the University of Connecticut's police force as a patrol officer.

Though she left academe for more than two decades, she said she is happy to be back.

"It is more conducive to my management style," she says. "Creativity is encouraged."

The Money Man

Catalano joins HUPD after a ten-year law enforcement career, mostly in the Boston area.

After graduating from Northeastern in 1990, Catalano worked as a security guard at a Boston homeless shelter, St. Francis House. He spent time working security for Boston Public Schools. For 18 months, he worked at Madison Park High School, one of Boston's roughest schools.

"It was a crazy, crazy place," he says. "I was younger and more energetic, and I loved it."

He moved to Washington, and joined the Department of Justice. His work overseeing grant programs gave him a view of policing across the country, he said. He worked with the Community Oriented Policing Strategies (COPS) program, helping to hand out over $1.2 billion a year in grant money to police agencies.

He returned to Boston to work in Police Commissioner Paul Evans's strategic planning office--this time working to get grant money rather than handing it out--before taking his new position.

Catalano spent his first week at HUPD reading through old files, figuring out the issues he'll be dealing with: laptop and bicycle theft, suspicious activity and criminal problems among students.

"We seem to have some relationship issues among students," he adds.

In his job, Catalano has a "thin line" to walk between educating the Harvard community about crime, and raising anxieties unnecessarily.

"A little bit of fear is a good thing," he says.

The department is excited about Catalano's appointment and what it will mean for Harvard's crime prevention program in the future.

"There are many things Steve can bring to the table and help spread throughout the department," says Peggy A. McNamara, the HUPD spokesperson.

"We've needed a solid, well-educated crime prevention person for some time," she says.

Sitting across from McNamara, HUPD's conference table, Catalano smiles at her comment.

"When are you going to hire him?" he jokes.