Brennan LaBrie
News Editor
PLU has a new campus safety director at the helm.
This past June, Detective Sergeant Tara Simmelink replaced former Campus Safety director Lt. Greg Premo, who left to lead the University Place Police Department.
As a fully-commissioned officer working in a contract position with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department and PLU, Simmelink retains her extra duties with the department, such as negotiation lead for the Pierce County SWAT team, alongside her primary duties at PLU.
PLU’s contract with the sheriff’s department dates back to 2004.
Simmelink arrived at PLU with extensive law enforcement experience under her belt. After graduating from Central Washington University, Simmelink served as a corrections officer at the Washington State Corrections Facility in Yakima. She then shifted careers and cities, becoming a patrol officer for the City of Pacific’s police department, as well as their first full-time female on staff.
After several years in Pacific, Simmelink joined the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department. In the 19 years since, she has served on patrol, in the special investigation unit, narcotics and vice unit, and homicide and missings persons units, among other departments, testing up to detective and then sergeant detective over that period. Her most recent primary duty was supervising the special assault unit as a sergeant detective with the department.
Simmelink founded the Pierce County Santa Cops program within the Sheriff’s Department, a program that provides food, gifts, and household items to Pierce County families in need during the holiday season, and serves as a counselor at the Law Enforcement Youth Camp.
PLU came onto Simmelink’s radar as a possible host for training classes for her detectives in the special assault unit. The classes were being held in Burien, which was inconvenient for her officers. She reached out to Premo about PLU, who informed her of students who were looking for the perspective of a female law enforcement officer for a study.
Simmelink said talking with the students “intrigued” her, and when the campus safety director position opened up shortly thereafter, she submitted an application.
“I’ve been in law enforcement for 24 years, so doing something completely different was attractive,” she said. “I did some research on the position and felt like it would be a new challenge at this stage of my career.”
She and four other candidates went through a week-long interview process that involved submitting their applications to PLU, followed by an oral board made up members from PLU and the sheriff’s department. Three of the candidates moved on to a meeting with PLU community members. At the end of the week, she was given the position.
Joanna Royce Davis, p.h.D., Vice President for Student Life, said that they hired Simmelink because, on top of her heavy credentials, she demonstrated a “clear understanding” of the PLU mission, and “key skills in collaboration, community building, teaching and learning, thoughtful leadership, and advocacy.”
Through her numerous visits to campus, Simmelink became enamored by the community, and its focus on student engagement and success.
“As soon as I came on campus, everybody was very welcoming, and very helpful,” she said, “so if I didn’t know where something was or how to do something, everybody was more than willing to help.”
Upon assuming her position at the end of the school year, Simmelink set to work learning about and engaging the campus community. After presenting at this year’s New Student Orientation, she stuck around, hoping to orient herself with the college’s policies.
She said she has greatly enjoyed working with and training her student campus safety officers, including the small aspects like teaching them how to file reports.
As a veteran in training law enforcement officers, Simmelink said she has found the transition to training safety officers to be interesting. On one hand, she said, there are differences in engagement — safety officers focus on security, not law enforcement, and hold no arresting powers. However, some aspects of training, like teaching how to deal with people in a crisis, are universal.
Professional Safety Officer Chaunce Shrewsbury said that he’s appreciated the changes that have been made in Simmelink’s short tenure with campus safety, such as a new break room shared by both the professional and student officers that has brought them closer together, and the open door policy that Simmelink maintains.
“She seems really interested and concerned about the employees here and what’s going on in our lives,” Shrewsbury said.
Simmelink said she is continuing to learn on the job, and is always looking for new ways to engage with the campus community.
“I want people to have positive experiences with campus safety,” she said of her main goal moving forward, “that we’re here to help, and making sure that we brand ourselves in such a way that we are inclusive, that anybody would feel comfortable reaching out to campus safety.”
