The Chronicle

April 16th, 2008

Once upon a time, I was a normal, well-adjusted Chronicle reporter…

Then came a tip about escalating departures of officers in the Duke University Police Department. Two months of reporting later, the result is in the paper this week with a series looking inside DUPD. I can’t take credit for being the first Chronicle staffer to write about some of the problems the department has faced in recent months—that distinction goes to columnist Elliott Wolf, a senior. At The Chronicle, however, the news and editorial pages have a strict separation, and I was unable to use any of Wolf’s reporting in my series.

I didn’t need to. University statistics confirm that nearly one-third of DUPD has left in the past two years. Some officers say that the arrival of Aaron Graves as vice president for campus safety and security has a great deal to do with the problem. From a strict correlation standpoint that explanation is a possibility, as departures accelerated after Graves took his post in January 2006. And some former officers at the University of Southern California, where Graves worked before Duke, said they can believe that their former boss may have brought problems to Durham from the West Coast.It is not the only explanation, though. The University is looking into questions of compensation and DUPD philosophy and has hired Sibson Consulting to help. A preliminary report from Sibson suggests that compensation, at least, is in line with other departments in the area.
One last note: Reporting a story almost exclusively with anonymous sources is never an easy decision. All DUPD officers who agreed to speak with me insisted on anonymity to protect their jobs. Chronicle editors agreed to grant it on the condition that all the officers substantiate their assertions and refrain from ad-hominem attacks on current leadership.

That leadership, chiefly Graves and Maj. Gloria Graham, who followed Graves from USC in 2007, was cooperative as I reported the story. I appreciate Graham’s willingness to speak on the record about allegations about her and her superior. Graves and I swapped e-mails but were never able to sit down face-to-face. He says he is looking into issues internally.
A final report from Sibson is due in the coming weeks.

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