David Hendry, 51, recalls USF St. Petersburg as a cluster of buildings serving as a small extension of the Tampa campus. He was born at Bayfront Medical Center and educated at Shorecrest Preparatory School and St. Petersburg College. Years later, he returns to his hometown as USFSP’s new police director, pleased with the growth of the city and campus.
Though he hasn’t spent much time on campus yet, Hendry has three decades of college town experience from attending Florida State University, and serving with the Tallahassee Police Department and Tallahassee Community College.
Now, after a day in the office or being out in the field with University Police Services, he explores outdoors with his two dogs, Georgia and Mason. After taking a year to settle back in St. Petersburg, he plans to return to his favorite pastime # training therapy dogs to visit hospitals and nursing homes.
To get to know the new director, the Crow’s Nest sat down with Hendry to discuss his background and plans for USFSP.
The Crow’s Nest: What was it like for you to police in Tallahassee?
David Hendry: I did 28 years with the Tallahassee Police Department, which is a big municipality. It’s a big city. It’s a college town with over 60,000 students. We were very engaged. All of our police activities were interrelated to college activities. Of course, we worked real close with all of the universities there. So I was very used to college life and policing in college areas. As I retired from there, I went to Tallahassee Community College. I’ve been there the past two years. When this position opened, it really was a great opportunity to return to St. Pete. So I’m real happy to be back here. I’ve noticed a lot. St. Pete has grown a lot. Certainly, the downtown area is real exciting and lots of activities going on. It’s exciting to go along with that.
CN: What was the most outrageous or bizarre case you ever had in Tallahassee?
DH: Oh wow. It runs the gambit. You know, we get a bit of everything. There was one exciting one where I was undercover, and I was in an unmarked car, and I wore plain clothes and all that. I was stopped at an intersection, and a car came screeching up next to me and stopped at the red light, and as they did, the driver kind of waved his arm out the window as he was holding a big bottle of beer. A stream of beer went flying across the intersection. So here he was, right next to a police officer. So I pulled him over and ultimately arrested him for DUI. But it’s crazy because they wouldn’t think they were pulled up next to a police officer, but they had a lot to drink that day.
CN: What did you do to establish relationships with the college students around Tallahassee?
DH: The biggest thing was to be fair about everything. The students are a big part of the community, and it brings a lot youth and worldliness to the community. That’s exciting to be a part of, and sports and all the culture related to university life is fantastic. What we did mostly is we built a lot of partnerships and collaborated a bit on activities. I worked for the city at the time, so my role was to bring college groups together with neighborhood associations and all kinds of business associations, and build a collaboration, so all the groups understood each other and could work together to improve the community, to solve problems, anything they might be confronted with.
CN: Given your experiences, what do you feel you are bringing to USFSP?
DH: It is interesting because USFSP confronts some of the same issues I’ve confronted at Tallahassee Community College. It’s a college that was growing, just as USF is. You see, USF St. Pete undertaking a strategic planning process to decide where we want the university to be in the future. It’s kind of the same process we were involved in and engaged in at TCC. So that was a big part. But there’s always general safety and security, which means that it’s the growth of the police department, making sure officers have the best training and equipment to perform their role, that we have the most contemporary police practices and protocols, that we’re understanding of the community that we work within and that we’re representative of that. So those were very similar challenges. In emergency management, that has a lot to do with preparing the university for any type of crisis we might be confronted with so we can ensure that we have the best resolution for that. Those are very similar to the things I confronted at TCC, and I see those here.
CN: What will you do to make sure students know your face and know you’re here?
DH: I end up being a pretty visible person, participating in events. But [also] working real close with student affairs and academic affairs. For me, it’s all about being engaged in the process and in the community. So sometimes that can be simply a presence and sometimes that can be an active participant in a committee or group engaged in fixing a problem. It’s being engaged.
CN: We’re going to throw USFSP-specific problems at you. How would you handle security and intruders on campus?
DH: The big thing we do, just in general, is to try to prevent it whenever possible. That has to do with potentially making improvements in the area, lighting and things of that sort. The other part is visibility. One of the things we’ve done here recently is change the uniforms and the appearance of the officers so they have a new look, they’re more visible. The officers here are not only in cars, but they’re on foot and bikes, so they’re visible in that regard. It has a lot to do with being out and about. The next part is more involved in building positive methods to share information. It has a lot to do with engaging the community, engaging our campus to say, “Hey, if you become aware of suspicious people or see suspicious things, reach out to us so we have the ability to respond to them.” One of the beauties of having a police department on campus is we have that ability to immediately respond to what the problem might be. A lot of our effort will be to say, “This is how you contact us. These are the things you look for. These are the expectations you can have of us.”
Some responses may be edited for space.
