By Ashley Shickler
Staff Reporter
Chief security officer, Jon Corvino has three main ideas that he and his security team are putting into place for campus safety on all seven campuses, he said.
The first one is called Operation Hello. This is a new idea that they’re using to try to change the culture on campus, said Officer Corvino.
“A lot of young people have their headphones in, their heads down, they’re moving, and they’re not paying attention to their surroundings. The whole premise of this is to change the culture,” Corvino said.
Corvino’s officers must give him a daily log of how many people they say hello to on campus, and that person needs to say hello in return, said Corvino.
“Our goal is to get 25,000 actual hellos back, within a month,” Corvino said.
Officer Corvino also performs a table top exercise with his team and supervisors. He puts down a map of the campus, gives his team monopoly pieces, and a scenario. They practice where they’re going to put all the emergency vehicles, how and where they’re going to move students in case of a shooting. They do a major table top exercise twice a year, said Officer Corvino.
Corvino has taught fifteen active shooter training classes for both students and teachers, and he hopes to do more and have better turnouts each time, he said.
When asked if he feels these classes should be mandatory, Corvino said that he does feel these active shooter training classes should be mandatory and he said, eventually they will be, it’s just a matter of time.
Lastly, Officer Corvino goes onto the Airforce base once a month to recruit retired air force guys to be security, he said.
Officer Corvino has thirty years of law enforcement experience and during his last ten years at Albuquerque Police Department he trained 400-500 Police Officers. After his retirement from APD, he applied for a position at CNM as Chief Security Officer and has been feeling supported ever since, he said.
Corvino and his team of officers encourage the students to stop in and see what they’ve been up to or maybe even apply to become part of the team, he said.
