Tyrone Malik Cato rode along with Cpl. Matt Gaither during his normal Saturday night Muncie Gras rounds.
Even while on his rounds during the slow night of Saturday's Muncie Gras celebration, Cpl. Matt Gaither still performs his usual protocol as if there were danger around every corner.
Cpl. Matt Gaither has been working at the Ball State Police Department for six years. He graduated from Ball State in 2001 and was hired by the department in 2003 before he was promoted to the rank of Corporal in August of 2007. Working on a campus keeps things from becoming predictable, Gaither said.
"The population that we have to serve changes yearly," Gaither said. "A lot of [departments] in cities and towns deal with a rather routine clientele that they deal with. Each year, the problems and situations we deal with are always different."
Gaither said that no matter how long an officer has been on the force, serving is always a learning experience.
"You may [have been] on the force for ten years, you may have been on for fifteen years, yet you'll always have to keep up with different perspectives that students of different age groups and backgrounds have," Gaither said. "You always have to keep up with dealing with things faculty and staff ask of you. We deal in public relations more so than departments in other counties."
Despite the continuously different clientele, the age group of the campus never changes, Gaither said.
"The people we usually deal with always stay about the same age, even if they're always coming and going," Gaither said. "Sometimes as an officer on a campus, you have to be able to communicate with an age group that's considerably younger than you. If you can't do that it'll cause problems at some point."
Gaither said it's important for an officer to have an order of operations during their shifts.
"I try to see what, if anything, has changed from day to day. I try to hit the parking lot, I check to see what vehicles have been broken into. I try to make my presence known for people who are walking to and from class. We do a lot narcotic investigations, in dorms and at apartments so I occasionally make checks around those places."
During the annual festival of Muncie Gras, the biggest problems arise after the celebration has finished and people leave the bars, Gaither said.
"When the people who go there from campus are coming back [from Muncie Gras] we get impaired drivers who try to drive back, we run into people becoming disorderly on the trolley that takes people down there and back, fights in The Village and other situations that are alcohol related," Gaither said. "Delaware County Police and Ball State Police have done a good job in the past in making sure that things remain orderly."
Even areas immediately off campus are essentially under the Ball State Police Department's jurisdiction since they are usually quicker to get to the scene of a crime than Delaware County's department, Gaither said.
"Just this past week, we investigated the robbery of a Pizza King delivery-driver at the intersection of Gilbert and Calvert and we ended up apprehending the two suspects less than a block away from where the actual robbery took place," Gaither said. "We interviewed the victim and the suspects, getting confessions from the latter."
Corporal Gaither gets a call from another officer requesting assistance for a traffic stop. Gaither opens up his dashboard laptop and uses its GPS system to provide him with the location of other officers' vehicles and statuses at that moment.
No matter the problem on campus, cooperation with officers is what helps solve them quicker, which is important since those problems on campus aren't consistent, Gaither said.
"From year to year, it's hard to say if there's been an increase or decrease in drug use, but we're running across a lot more controlled substances [on campus]," Gaither said. "If students are willing to talk and help out our narcotics investigation, we can refer them to Delaware County's Drug Task Force so that they can work with the students and find out if they're buying the drugs on campus or bringing it from home. We work closely with [the Task Force]. "
While each officer in Ball State's department is equally capable in carrying out their duties, the campus department's staff is diverse which is good for varied situations, Gaither said, as a driver with a broken headlight passed by.
"We have a female officer that works our shift," Gaither said. "She's not only a good officer, but she can be better at handling situations with other women than a male officer. I may go to a scene and not know anything about the situation beyond what's on the surface, but another officer might."
Gaither gets a call from dispatch that a woman is trying to contact her daughter to inform her that her father just passed away, yet she can't get in touch with her. Gaither is asked to inform the girl of the situation. The job has its difficulties, yet the worst ones are those that are heavily emotional, Gaither said.
"Seeing things that happen to absolutely innocent people and kids is difficult to deal with too," Gaither said. "An innocent kid doesn't usually have the chance to defend theirselves or to ask for help. They don't have control over getting themselves out of harmful situations, and as a police officer I ask myself 'what could I have done to prevent this?' It's hard."
Corporal Gaither pulled over the driver who was driving with a headlight out. Since they had no priors, he let them off with a warning. There isn't a gun battle or a $1 million drug bust every day, but Gaither said that if it weren't for officers on campus handling all the little things, the backlash would be tremendous.
"There are a lot of times where it seems like there might not be anything going on," Gaither said. "That guy I pulled over could've been intoxicated on top of having a headlight out. He could've been the suspect in an ongoing investigation. You never know. Sometimes the most simple traffic stop can blossom into something more, and that's what we're always prepared for."
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