DPS Chief Lauretta Hill introduced herself to each attendee prior to taking the Edison Auditorium stage to speak about campus safety and leadership.
Hill has nearly three decades of law enforcement experience. She entered her position at USC in December after her most recent six-year stretch as a police chief at Dallas College.
Although Hill is a seasoned law enforcement professional, she believes that her roles as a mother, a wife, a sister and an auntie have heavily influenced her personable leadership style because they “taught her to care.”
“I’m raising two little Black boys in a society where everybody doesn’t feel that their voices [are] valuable,” Hill said. “I can be a part of that solution, to be in a profession where I can build those relationships where not only my kids are comfortable, but everybody’s kids are comfortable in the community. The same thing I want for my children, I want for the students here.”
With that desire comes a philosophy rooted in accessibility both inside and outside of uniform. Hill noted that her position requires a 24 hour, seven days a week commitment to community engagement.
“I want to take every opportunity to engage with students, so I’m making myself available,” Hill said. “We’re not a separate room. We are USC.”
DPS Patrol Captain of Operations, Ed Palmer, spoke to Hill’s attention to detail and her frequent and efficient communication about keeping students safe.
“When anything happens at night, I’m the first call, and I usually send out either a call or text message to [Hill],” Palmer said. “Her philosophies and mine align. Community engagement is a way of life, it’s not just a thing you do at work. She relates very well to that, and I think that’s been our biggest connection.”
Hill and Palmer are committed to implementing the pillars of trust, inclusion, respect and belonging that the ONE USC Safety Vision initiative represents.
ONE Safety Vision is a program derived from the DPS Community Advisory Board with the intent of fostering “a USC where everyone feels safe, respected and protected from crime, while recognizing that this can only be achieved by addressing the diverse experiences and needs of all USC students, faculty, staff and neighbors.”
Even though some might be suspect of the goal to make everyone on campus feel safe, Lennon Wesley, the moderator of the event and a member of the DPS community advisory board, vouches for how down-to-earth Hill is.
“I don’t know if it’s the Texas thing or the auntie thing, but she’s extremely genuine, extremely fun to be around,” Wesley said. “[She has] great experience in the field. So being a real person, combined with the fact that she knows a lot about this and can understand even my own personal experience, I think goes a long way.”
Hill acknowledges that rebuilding trust within the community through this vision requires facing difficult conversations head-on. Common concerns such as racial profiling, counseling responses to mental health calls and the use of non-lethal weapons were listed as points of reference.
As the former head of the LAPD Cadet Leadership Program, Natalie Torres-Soriano found excitement in these initiatives at the past three events that she’s attended where Hill has spoken.
“She’s eyes wide open. She wants to resolve the issues,” Torres-Soriano said. “It’s not ‘let me learn about them.’ She knows, and she’s on her path already to make those changes.”
Hill has been developing this program to achieve her main goal at USC: to keep USC students safe and make them feel heard.
“I will absolutely be sure that we’re trained, and that we stay on the cutting edge of best practices, working with our different partners here and just listening to the people,” Hill said.
“I’m just as much a part of USC as the next person, as a student, as a faculty, [or] member of the staff. And so our shared experiences and wanting everybody to be safe, we have some of the same goals.”
Hill understands, as a member of the USC community, that the university has a wide array of students and faculty who deserve more than just representation, which she hopes to provide as a Black woman. Beyond that, she wants the community to know who she and her staff are.
“You will know us before the emergency happens. Before you need to call, you’ll feel like ‘I know my DPS officer, I know my CSO, I can call and talk to dispatch,’” Hill said. “There’s a difference between being represented and feeling like you belong. I want to be a part of feeling like people belong.”