The UWO Police Department (UWOPD) created a podcast last November that covered a wide variety of campus-related topics.
These topics included community questions, scam and security, active threat preparation and more.
The podcast currently has 16 episodes and features the Acting Chief of Police Chris Tarmann, who helped create the podcast, and a variety of guest speakers who all help educate on the episode topic.
Tarmann said the inspiration behind the podcast was to build a sense of community between campus and the UWOPD.
“The podcast builds a bridge between our agency and the community to provide information on a platform that allows listeners to gather information while they’re still doing other things in their lives,” he said.
Tarmann said he believes this is an important part of building a stronger community, both for campus and the police department.
“Policing is successful when strong relationships are built between the police and the community they serve,” he said. “We believe this can be accomplished in part by having authentic conversations regarding laws, law enforcement processes, and important safety information.”
The podcast also creates a deeper understanding of what the police department fully strives to do.
“The narrative of who police are can be written by external sources and the podcast affords us an opportunity to show the community that we serve who works here…” Tarmann said. “And what type of positive impacts they would like to make while they are here.”
Topics of the podcast are inspired by the community, as Tarmann looks at what would be important for the community to hear about.
“We identify what is going on in our community or in the larger communities around us that may impact our community members,” he said.
Along with that, the podcast is decided by outside factors that come up as time goes on.
“We have a lot of partnerships with local organizations because of the work we do to proactively reduce crimes or safety topics that impact campuses across the country,” Tarmann said.
“Once we find a strong partner who we believe can provide helpful information to our community, we get a podcast interview scheduled”
Joseph Peterson, a geology professor at the university, was featured in two episodes of the podcast focused on active threat preparedness.
“Capt. Tarmann asked me to be part of the podcast for two episodes to give an abridged version of the active threat workshops that we hold for different organizations on campus,” he said. “It was a really great experience.”
Peterson was able to share messages about safety on the podcast and reach a wider audience on campus.
“Being able to continue our mission of keeping our campus safe is very important to me,” Peterson said. “By taking the safety training to UWOPD on the Mic, we were able to potentially reach a much larger, and hopefully, safer audience.”
Just like Peterson, Tarmann has been happy to share about different topics on the podcast to help educate the community.
“There are some strong topics that I’m really glad we were able to tackle in podcasts,” Tarmann said. “I like ‘Episode 16: Title IX, Aurora Forensic Nursing,’ ‘Episode 14: UWOPD Community Questions,’ and episodes 11 and 12.”
While there are no new episodes of the podcast for this semester, Tarmann is hopeful for the future of the podcast.
“I’m hoping we’ll get something recorded here in the next couple of weeks so we can continue to the momentum from the end of the Spring 2023 semester,” he said.
Even more than that, Tarmann is looking forward to continuing to educate the community.
“Most of all I’m looking forward to continuing to grow strong relationships with our community members through this additional platform,” he said.
If anyone has ideas for podcast topics in the future or is interested in being on the podcast, email for more information.
