Over the past 30 years, the Peralta Community College District (Peralta) has undergone substantial changes to its security model which continues to evolve. The Citizen interviewed Peralta’s recently appointed Interim Executive Director of Public Safety Abdul Pridgen regarding his new vision for districtwide safety and proposed plan to reintegrate armed police into the security model. 

Peralta previously had its own police force until 1995, after an officer was killed in the line of duty. That same year, the district disbanded its police force in favor of security contracts with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO).

After 24 years of partnership, the Peralta Board of Trustees voted to terminate its contract with ACSO in 2019 and move toward a security model that “best fit” the Peralta campus’s needs. The district has not had paid to have police on campus since. 

Following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minnesota police officer in May of 2020, and after years of security contractor challenges, Peralta selected Marina Security as the single vendor to provide unarmed security services across all 4 campuses. As part of this security model, the position of Director of Public Safety was also created. The title “Executive” was tagged onto the position in 2023.

On July 1, 2024, Pridgen began his two year term as Interim Executive Director of Public Safety. 

During the Sept. 24, 2024 Board of Trustees meeting, Pridgen introduced his new hybrid security model that includes both armed campus police and unarmed security forces. The model would also mobilize the student safety aide program, providing students in Merritt College’s Administration of Justice program with on the ground experience in community policing. He also discussed recent updates to the Rave Alert security app and expanding Peralta’s video surveillance technology to detect potential security issues. 

Pridgen brings over 30 years of experience to the role, previously serving as Chief of Police of the San Leandro Police Department and Seaside Police Department. He says this model, if approved by the Board of Trustees, can be rolled out over the next year and a half.   

The Citizen spoke with Pridgen about some of the specifics behind his vision. 

This conversation has been edited for clarity.

Tell us about your security plan and what the PCCD community can expect going forward.

So right now, there are a couple of things that I’m really excited about. One is Rave Alert, which is a mass communication system that we currently use for emergencies, whether it be earthquake, fire evacuation – major instances where we want to alert everyone immediately to evacuate wherever they are on whichever campus.

There’s also a component of Rave Alert that will allow us to create an app and personalize it to Peralta that has a lot of safety tips, and we can embed safety videos and emergency procedures.

Another thing, relatively speaking, this district is a pretty safe district. If you look at the Cleary data over the past year, there might have been 11 offences over all of the campuses and the district combined.

Which is fairly low, but people’s perception of safety is that it’s unsafe. My responsibility is to figure out how we improve people’s perceptions of safety. So, this app will have the ability for people to send to their friends or to Marina dispatch their exact location.

I’m leaving the Laney Tower, and I’m headed to the parking lot, and they send the link, and they can track them all the way to the parking lot. Then they can say, OK, I’m here, if anything happens along the way, we know exactly where someone needs to go.

People have to opt in, and I know people have concerns about privacy, but it’s only if they choose to. 

What happens to that data? Does that data stay with Marina Security or does it go to the Raid Alert app?

That I don’t know because it’s a link that we can see, and then when the user’s done, I don’t know.

And it’s not something that they continue to monitor, like oh, “I see where they are now.” We just don’t have any communication because they’ve cut off the link. 

What’s more important from my perspective is a request for proposals for what I would call a video observation software system, or hardware system, and what technology will allow us to do is recognize behavior that we might want to investigate further.

For example, if we program it, we want to know whenever someone engages in an activity that looks like a fight.

Right now we’ve got over 400 cameras, and the way things typically work: someone sees something happening, they call dispatch, dispatch is like, “What do you see?”, and then they send someone.

Well, with this system, it can immediately go to dispatch and pull up on the screen and they see the fight where it’s occurring. Marina in real time can pull it up on their phones to see what’s happening as they are headed to that location.

I don’t know which company we’ll ultimately select, but this is what lots of companies have said they can do. We can’t possibly have all the people that we would like to have in positions to deter things from occurring, but we’ve got those cameras.

The other component is you can speak to them through a speaker system, either autonomously where we program it. Software I want you to say this, if someone breaches this threshold during these hours, “Excuse me, you’re trespassing on Peralta Community College District property.” Or “If you need help, please call this number.” 

Or they can communicate with them real-time over dispatch. “Hi, this is Marina dispatch. I noticed that you’re on Marina property, Is there anything I can do to help?”

With respect to the community safety model that I presented to the board on September 24th, at some point, they’ll make a decision on whether or not they support going in that direction. I’ve had a lot of opportunities to speak to the campus community and what I’m hearing is a hybrid model.

There are opportunities where you absolutely, positively have to have police and I understand the concern that history is replete with examples of police doing the wrong thing. But there are also examples of police doing the right thing, and I know I’m an example. I’ve never cursed at anybody my entire career. I’ve never used excessive force against anybody my entire career and I’ve been in SWAT, I’ve been in narcotics, I’ve been in every assignment you can imagine.

So, the bar that I set is high because I know it’s possible because I’ve done it, so the expectation is that we’re going to treat people with dignity and respect.

You talked at the board meeting presentation about the security questionnaire sent out that had 500 respondents. That’s about 2% of the student population. How are you getting to the rest of the population?

Well, part of it is speaking to the leadership of the student organizations.

So that’s what I’ve been doing, Academic Senate, students, and I’ve listened to them, and they’ve shared their concerns about technology and how it could be abused, and I hope I set their concerns to rest. I’ve let them know this is what we’re going to do, and this is how we’re going to use it. There’s not going to be facial recognition. We could care less about what someone looks like, it’s the behavior that we’re concerned with, and that’s what this system will identify, people’s behavior. 

Talk to me about it from the point of view of those folks who just don’t want to have police around and how that’s going to improve their experience on campus and what it brings to campus.

My response to them would be, give us an opportunity. I’m not going to shove officers in your face, but I believe given the information that I’ve read over the course of the amount of time that Peralta has been here, police are coming to the campus.

Would we rather have people that we train that we can hold accountable that meet our level of expectation on how they interact with the Community?

We have an Administration of Justice course. Those are people who want to go into public safety because they want to change the experience that some people are having. Would we not want to create a pipeline where those students are matriculating into the Department of Community Safety so that they can serve you and they understand the culture and how to respond to your needs?

I don’t think there’s a way to get around it, police are here, and if they’re going to be here, I want to make sure that they are the people that we train, that understand our culture and how to interact with our campus community.

I’m creating a model of what it looks like when officers are doing the right thing and interacting with the community, respecting the community and meeting the community’s needs.

How’s it been so far working with Marina Security and what’s the hierarchy?

The president of the company and I meet on a quarterly basis, but day in and day out, they’ve got a couple of supervisors.

The general manager came on board maybe a few months ago and they’re getting up to speed, so it’s a really good relationship because they’re very receptive to recommendations that we make.

I’m not the kind of person who says, you do this or else – it’s a conversation. Hey, I would appreciate it if you guys would do X, Y and Z and they know that’s really what we need as a customer because that’s going to make the experience of the people that we interact with better. They’ve been receptive to everything as a matter of fact.

I went to a de-escalation with their team of course because I wanted to see what they were learning because that’s one of the most important skills that one needs to possess when interacting with people. How to diffuse situations, and so I sat through the course, and I was like, they can beef this up a little bit, so I gave him some feedback. So, it’s been great, and they’ve bent over backwards to try to accommodate everything that we’ve asked them to do.

Are you in the typical Marina officers’ chain of command?

No. So the way it works is: if an ambassador were to do something and I get the complaint, I talk to the general manager. But I can’t interact with Marina security, I can’t go up to him and say, hey, what are you doing? You know you need to do X, Y and Z. I’ve got to go through their chain of command.

So their policies and procedures are going to apply to any type of disciplinary situation?

Correct.

Describe your plans for staffing and responsibilities.

I don’t know the number if the board were to say create a hybrid model. I don’t know what that number would be, but it’s going to be a contingent of sworn people from virtually sunup to sundown.

I know Merritt’s like, “if you got police, we want them walking around,” and other campuses, maybe not.

You can’t escape the fact that it does serve as some deterrent when you have police in certain spaces, but at the end of the day, it’s about making sure that the people that you have serving you are meeting your expectations and treating you the way you deserve to be treated.

What I love about this opportunity is I get to hire every single person, as opposed to me inheriting a culture that’s deeply rooted and difficult to change.

So, from day one, here are the expectations, this is what I expect of you and me getting to do a deep dive on this person as a human being: what have you done in your life; how have you interacted with other groups; why do you want to come here; what do you think we would be doing here from a law enforcement perspective?

Because most people know the cultures are completely different between a city and a college. Colleges, it’s like how can we support students as they’re on their journey to learn, get educated and go somewhere else.

What do you want to say to the PCCD community?

That I’m approachable, I’m sincere, I’m authentic and I’m here to make people’s experience at Peralta better.

I’m hoping to be in a position where I can bring on members of our team that understand the unique position they’re in to serve such a diverse group of students and appreciate that diversity and want to make sure they have not only a pleasant experience, but a rewarding experience and get to their destination, which is to graduate. I’m really humbled by the opportunity.

I’ve always believed If you do the right thing for the right reasons, it will be acknowledged at some point and so that’s how I’ve lived my life and I’ve been blessed to be put in so many positions because people are like, “I think that guy could probably do well here.”