TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - Monica Moll had worked only a month as Ohio State University’s public safety director when a disturbing call on the police radio interrupted a Monday morning meeting in her new office.
The 42-year-old went to the Columbus campus Oct. 31, fresh from a six-year stint as police chief and public safety director at Bowling Green State University.
She had planned to spend her first six months at the much larger university observing safety operations and getting to know the people she would lead.
Two big security concerns loomed top of mind: The contentious presidential election and its aftermath, which had resulted in a tumultuous on-campus rally, and big game-day crowds during the Buckeye football season. Then that Nov. 28 radio call shattered all routines.
“Those were already the things on my radar. I knew this was going to be a busy month and this kind of changed the plan,” she said.
A seasoned veteran of several campus police forces, Ms. Moll said she could tell right away the incident was serious. She left her office and walked down a couple doors to the communications center, where dispatchers were responding to a quickly unfolding situation.
Ohio State student Abdul Razak Ali Artan had driven his car into a crowd, gotten out, and stabbed people with a knife. About a dozen were injured, and an OSU police officer shot and killed the Somali-born attacker.
Ms. Moll credits her time at BGSU with preparing her to handle the emergency.
“What was helpful at Bowling Green was, because you weren’t in a large urban environment, you had time to do an intentional focus on training, and that definitely helped prepare me,” she said. “We were able to train, train, train, and practice at those things.”
She never responded to a situation at BGSU on the scale of the OSU attack.
But she helped implement a program that teaches students and others the same “run, hide, fight” principles Ohio State shared with its campus.
Michael Campbell, whom Ms. Moll hired and who became Bowling Green’s interim chief upon her departure, said the department holds mandatory training that covers everything from ethical topics to defensive tactics in big incidents.
BGSU also hired an emergency management coordinator while Ms. Moll was there.
“She was actually integral in expanding the role of the police department,” Chief Campbell said.
Ms. Moll brought knowledge, experience, and a thoughtful approach to her work at BGSU, said Sheri Stoll, vice president for finance and administration.
“The things that make her a good leader also make her the right kind of person to have in that type of a role when there are emergencies, but those emergencies happen infrequently. She is good in her role all the time,” Ms. Stoll said.
Administrators at Bowling Green practiced for emergencies, from how to alert students to running drills and holding mock press briefings.
That training kicked in as Ms. Moll stood in the center of a media scrum, discussing the attack in front of television cameras. Those watching the news saw a poised and calm public safety director.
By chance that morning she had put on a red shirt, one of the few scarlet-hued items of clothing she owned. She hadn’t been in Columbus long enough to expand her Ohio State-themed wardrobe. She attached an OSU pin, which a detective gave her a few days before, to her black blazer.
“She knew the environment and that I might need it,” Ms. Moll said.
She downplayed her work in responding to the OSU attack, calling her job “one of the easiest” in the operation.
“My main role was simply getting them the resources at the scene and explaining the good work that they did,” she said.
In the week and a half since the attack, she’s attended a vigil, “an important step in healing;” met with Muslim and Somali students, and worked with counselors to support officers. “You can imagine that when something like that happens there’s a lot of work to help folks feel safe,” she said.
The diversity and openness of campus police departments are among the reasons that Ms. Moll never left for a municipal police agency after being hired by Kent State University in 1996, when she was just out of the police academy.
She also has embraced the academic side of campus culture, completing her doctorate in political science from Kent State in May.
Having dealt with the first major test in her new job, Ms. Moll said she’s just now getting to the more mundane tasks she had expected would consume her first months at Ohio State. That means setting up her voicemail, processing payroll, reviewing the budget.
And, maybe, she said, a “return to normalcy will come.”
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Information from: The Blade, https://www.toledoblade.com/
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