This year’s Campus Safety conference in Chicago brought together security experts from around the country (with some international attendees!) to share their cutting edge ideas on security issues that affect today’s K-12 schools, hospitals and universities.
Campus Safety’s first keynote was Sheriff of the Cook County Sheriff’s Department Tom Dart. Cook County in Illinois is the second most populous county in the United States with over 5 million residents. A former prosecutor and state legislator, Dart became Cook County Sheriff in 2006.
Check out all the Campus Safety conference’s presenters power points here!
As sheriff, Dart introduced sweeping changes at the Cook County Jail, aggressively restructured the Sheriff’s police force and improved operations of the Court Services Department.
Dart has brought an aggressive yet innovative approach to law enforcement. In late 2014, he took advantage of his large jurisdiction to commission an anonymous sexual assault survey of all colleges and universities in the county. Dart’s questions focused on school’s strategies for addressing, investigating and deterring sexual assault.
In response to those results, the Sheriff’s Office began offering training for campus first responders and released a comprehensive report on the survey results that Dart encourages all college officials to read. Below is Dart’s keynote speech, where he talks about the survey and the difficulty of dealing with sexual assault on college campuses, among other things.
