Ohio State University Police Chief Named New Chief At U Of I
The University of Illinois has gone to another Big Ten school for its next chief of police.
School officials announced Wednesday that Craig Stone will be the Urbana campus' next executive director of public safety and chief of police, effective June 18. The U of I's Board of Trustees must approve the hire.
Stone has served as chief of police at Ohio State University since 2015. Prior to that, he served in the same role for one year at Cleveland State University.
Stone moved to university law enforcement after a 29-year career with the Columbus (OH) Division of Police.
He was chief of police at Ohio State in November 2016 when a man purposefully drove a car into a crowd of pedestrians on the Columbus campus, and then began attacking them with a butcher knife. The attacker injured 13 people before an OSU police officer shot and killed him.
Stone said in a Wednesday conference call with reporters that his department was "blessed" to have an officer already on site at the time of the incident.
"An officer was on scene, witnessed what happened, and he took action based on policies, procedures, and training," Stone said. "It goes hand-in-hand. You need to have policies in place, and then you need to train, and it goes into hiring the right people."
Urbana campus chancellor Robert Jones said in a news release that he's excited for Stone to lead the department.
"Craig Stone’s extensive experience in building community-centered safety and policing programs in a public university environment made him a clear choice as the next chief of police,” Jones said.
Stone said that the U of I job appealed to him because it gives him additional responsibilities.
"“It’s not just chief of police. It’s also the executive director of public safety," Stone said. "So, it allows me to spread my vision and my philosophy of policing across all areas, and not just the police department.”
Stone will replace Jeff Christensen, who retired as the U of I's chief of police on December 31, 2017.
This story was updated at 1:00pm after a conference call with Craig Stone and reporters.