Just 10 days after starting work as UCLA’s associate vice chancellor for campus and community safety, Steve Lurie discussed his plans for the role with campus politics editor Shiv Patel.

Lurie, a 27-year LAPD veteran who was involved in the department’s response to the Palestine solidarity encampment at UCLA, said he will spend his first few months on campus listening to various organizations on campus, including student groups. Lurie is also a UCLA alumnus.

[Related: Steve Lurie named new associate vice chancellor for campus and community safety]

The Undergraduate Students Association Council passed a resolution Tuesday that condemned Lurie’s appointment to the position.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Daily Bruin: Before (beginning as associate vice chancellor), you were in charge of the LAPD’s Westside operations, and this included (policing) the Palestine solidarity encampment at UCLA. How would you evaluate UCPD and LAPD response to the attack on the encampment? What, if anything, went wrong?

Steve Lurie: There’s several independent investigations that were done or are being done about the actions there, and I’ve started to review those and look forward to reviewing them all when they are done. Any large-scale law enforcement operation like that is complicated, and I’m committed to discovering what could be done differently in the final analysis. I’ve spent 28 years believing in continuous improvement, so I look forward to reading what those professional investigators have to say and making changes where needed.

DB: The 21CP (21st Century Policing Solutions) report called it (the police response to the encampment) “institutional paralysis.” How do you plan on changing the structures that may have led to that “institutional paralysis?”

SL: It is Chancellor (Julio) Frenk’s vision, and I support it 100%. The reason the Office of Campus and Community Safety exists is to provide us more streamlined and single point of safety contact for the entire university.

As I move forward in shaping the vision of a safe UCLA for all Bruins, it is to streamline that communication, to streamline those actions and give a single office at the associate vice chancellor level responsibility for safety that will help make things much more efficient moving forward. That’s why this office exists.

DB: On April 30, you were directed by Dominic Choi (the then-interim LAPD chief), according to an LAPD report, to prepare patrols of campus. At 11:07 (p.m.), UCPD informed you that police were overwhelmed. You got to campus at 1:14 (a.m. May 1). Police didn’t begin clearing the area until (about) 90 minutes later. What went on during those 90 minutes?

SL: Because of ongoing litigation, I can’t get into specifics of what happened there. My vision and the reason I’m here, the reason I came home to UCLA, my alma mater, in a place that I love so much, is to be looking forward and improving everything about a safe UCLA. I can’t get into details of what happened that night, but one of the reasons I’m here is so that any future issues that affect safety on campus can be dealt with from the Office of Campus and Community Safety with total community buy-in, in a single point of contact for the chancellor.

[Related: Pro-Israel counter-protesters attempt to storm encampment, sparking violence]

DB: The UCLA Police Department is on its third chief in just under 10 months. What are you looking for in a new chief? Do you know what the timeline is on hiring that person, and will the (UCLA) Academic Senate be consulted on the appointment?

SL: As I’m learning the university processes for doing so, we’re starting to develop what that job description will look like. I’m looking for a community collaborator. I’m looking for a demonstrated community leader who can build bridges between really diverse points of view.

One of the beauties of UCLA, if you think of us as a small city that we’re looking for a police chief for, this is a city with an incredible diversity of thought and ideas and philosophy, so we’re looking for for a leader who can bridge all of those different communities, be a listener, and be stable and here through the (2028) Olympic Games. The Olympic village will be on campus in 2028, and of course, keeping Bruins safe and keeping that Olympic village safe are top of mind for me.

A whole variety of community groups, including the Academic Senate, will be involved, especially prior to my recruiting the chief. I’m spending the first 100 days of my time on campus listening. I’m meeting with USAC and dozens of other groups to hear their vision for a safe UCLA, and that will include their feelings and thoughts and ideas about who should lead their police department.

Then, as the recruitment process winds down, and we get a pool of finalists, I would like to bring those finalists back to several community groups and committees to have them meet, and I’d like to hear their feedback on this select group of finalists. They will be involved in the process.

DB: USAC has a resolution on its (Feb. 11) agenda to declare its lack of confidence in you and to get them your appointment. Do you have any response to it?

SL: I look forward to working with every Bruin group who will meet with me to discuss their vision for a safe UCLA. As an alum, as a 30-year professional, in my core and in my heart as a Bruin, I want to learn what every group on campus feels about safety at UCLA and their vision moving forward of what we can do to help Bruins be safe.

The resolution was later amended to be a declaration of no confidence in Lurie’s office. However, its condemnation of Lurie’s appointment, as well as a call for the senate to hold a vote of no confidence in Lurie, remained in the version of the resolution that passed.

DB: UCLA has revised its Time, Place and Manner policies, which were announced in September. They’ve generated some blowback from students. The Academic Senate has expressed concerns about the policies. How will your office go about enforcing these policies?

SL: Time, Place and Manner restrictions are permitted by the Supreme Court.

I’m not intimately familiar with the specifics of UCLA’s yet, but they are in a list of things that I’m reviewing now. On university campuses, we are the breadbasket of the First Amendment. We want to embrace and cherish our role as a place where ideas can be expressed. That’s especially important for a university, and especially important for our nation’s number one public university. But First Amendment protections are not absolute, and there need to be some guardrails and guidelines on how expression happens. That’s what Time, Place and Manner restrictions are meant to do.

DB: How do you plan on making sure that your office is transparent and accountable to students and community members?

SL: I have a 30-year history of being an incredibly transparent public safety official. I am a community member. I’m a community collaborator. I love and cherish the opportunity to sit and talk, and I’ve done that and will continue to do that. I personally will have complete transparency with the community, whether that’s through formal communication, social media and emails and Bruins Safe (Online) and BruinALERT and doing the important work of communicating about safety or just me personally.

DB: How do you plan on using resources outside of policing to ensure safety on campus and to rebuild and maintain trust among community members?

SL: That’s why this is called the Office of Campus and Community Safety. It is so much more than policing and so much more than than the absence of crime. Sure, the objective measure of a safe community is a reduction or elimination – to the degree that you can – of crime. People want to be physically safe, but I am also interested in delving into and communicating with the community about the subject, the feeling of safety.

Chancellor Frenk’s vision is that safety is a meta-priority for campus. Bruins can win Nobel prizes and go on to do great things through research and academics and sports and the arts, but they can’t do any of that if they’re not safe.

We have a tiered response program at UCLA so that the UCPD involvement in an incident is not necessarily the first one. We want to ensure safety in the way that people feel safe to express themselves, safety seeking resources and assistance and help when they need it, and safety in that we are openly and transparently communicating to the community about the current safety status of their campus. It is much more than just traditional policing.