Creighton’s Department of Public Safety will begin wearing body cameras starting this year, according to Public Safety Associate Director Kathy Gonzalez.  

Creighton students know the Department of Public Safety simply as Pub Safe, a uniformed, constant campus presence that patrols the roads and parking lots around campus. The department’s purpose at Creighton is titular: to keep campus safe. With the introduction of body-worn cameras (BWCs), the department hopes campus will become even safer.  

BWCs were brought into consideration as part of the department’s commitment to continually review and adopt new practices. Gonzalez explained that new procedures surrounding BWCs will help improve Public Safety’s transparency and enhance safety.  

It may be strange to associate BWCs with a department like Campus Safety, when these cameras are mostly associated with police. Nationally, BWCs have become widely adopted, although a recent executive order from the Trump Administration has rescinded a 2022 requirement for federal law enforcement to use them.  

In Nebraska, body-worn cameras have been required by law since 2017, falling in accordance with the Revised Statute 81-1453. The idea behind body-worn cameras — how they’ll improve campus safety, that is — is that they tap into the psychological tendency of people to behave better when they’re being watched. Research referenced by the Omaha Police Department has shown that use of force by police has been cut in half since the introduction of BWCs.  

Gonzalez said she expected that the introduction of body cameras to the campus will help improve accountability and the behavior of Pub-safe officers. But besides that, the other application of BWCs is documentation. Through a constant video feed, review of campus interactions between officers, faculty and students can be better understood and learned from. Altogether, trust between campus safety and students is expected to improve.  

When asked where the footage will be stored, Gonzalez said that all footage will be kept in a secure server, where it will stay for a minimum of 60 days. If footage contains a particular incident or other pertinent information, it will be kept longer, for the sake of investigations and other considerations.