It was as simple as seeing an advertisement on the International Association of Campus Law Administrators website for someone to fill the chief of police position.
Troy Lane felt he was qualified and applied.
A few weeks later, UT felt the same.
Having served as the chief of police for nearly five years at the University of Wyoming, Lane said that he inherited somewhat of a misguided program and in that way he has tried to lead them in the right direction.
Along with his military time, Lane is a 23-year veteran in law enforcement, and 16 of those years have been in campus law enforcement.
Lane said that a lot of people who work on campus love it. He puts himself in that group.
“Most people work at a university because that is the demographic that they love working with and I am one of those people,” Lane said. “I got into campus law enforcement not really knowing if I would enjoy it, and seventeen years later, I enjoy it and I am not leaving.”
Over the years, Lane has learned that the best ways to tackle certain campus crises that come up — one of the issues being underage drinking and DUIs.
While at UW, Lane dealt with a lot of different cases that involved alcohol, and said the campus police and the city police had to learn to work well together.
“We teamed up with the city county highway patrol and I think we made some significant improvements in DUI enforcements,” Lane said. “It’s just as common to see of my guys downtown on patrol during the DUI saturation enforcement as it is to see, probably more common, than it is to see a city police officer on campus. But it just illustrated that we are working together quite effectively.”
Policing alcohol use and abuse isn’t the only job of campus police. Crowd control is an undertaking for any police chief wanting to avoid mishaps and disturbances.
Lane is ready to take on the challenge, and he feels like his experiences elsewhere have prepared him for this job.
“It would behoove me to rely very heavily on those who have much more experience than I do here,” he said. “Even management itself doesn’t change a whole lot from venue to venue. It has mainly to deal with the number of people attending the venue and the number of people you have to respond to issues. And then assigning those people where they can do the most good.”
Over the years, Lane has worked several presidential events and sees the demographic, and the problems they may present, as the only major difference between those events and college football games.
Student Government President Adam Roddy first met Lane back in April when he came to UT for an interview.
“I was really impressed with the fact that he was trained in a lot of different ways,” he said. “He mentioned first-hand responders, he mentioned homeland security and he was mentioning defense training.”
Roddy hopes that Lane can get the University of Tennessee Police Department to work well with students, because in the past he’s felt like UTPD and students are put at odds against one another.
Roddy said that more open forums and discussions would be better for both students and officers. Instead of talking past each other, they can talk to each other.
“I’d love to see more working together, more open forums where students can go to the Shiloh Room and talk to the campus police,” he said. “I would love for that communication and dialogue to be open a lot more.”
