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Top CSUEB cop offers timeless lessons
By Gideon Rubin
The Daily Review
May 16, 2008
CASTRO VALLEY — Alfred Iannarelli was making breakfast on a lazy spring morning a little more than a year ago when the news popped on his television set. He watched in horror for hours as the grisly details of the April 2007 Virginia Tech massacre trickled out.
For Iannarelli, the incident was personal.
In 1968, whe he was then-California State University, Hayward's first police chief, he wrote "The Campus Police," the only known law-enforcement textbook for college and university settings of its time.
After Virginia Tech, he immediately decided to take action.
"I said to myself, 'I think it's about time to revise my book,'"°'' Iannarelli, 79, says in his heavy Philadelphia accent.
Speaking at his Castro Valley hills home, Iannarelli says he had received numerous inquiries over the years about the book, which had long since been out of print. He felt compelled to republish it in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, which he says shattered a common misconception about campus safety.
"People's perception is that a college campus is a sanctuary, and it isn't," he says.
Like the first edition, the latest version of "The Campus Police'' is divided into six chapters.
The book heavily emphasizes structure as a key component of campus law enforcement.
Iannarelli says campus police need to maintain autonomy to be functional agencies.
It became apparent to him during university demonstrations of the 1960s that no such structure existed in campus law enforcement, prompting him to write what he considered a template for campus policing.
"There was no administration or conformity to law enforcement (standards) as far as campuses were concerned, and we had some very, very large campuses," he says.
"The Campus Police" is among six works by Iannarelli. He ventured into the realm of fiction with "Code name: Operation Bright Angel," self-published in 2003, which tells of a top-secret military project's exposure, leading the United States into a nuclear confrontation.
Iannarelli developed insights into what could cause such a scenario during his 24-year military career, which included four years of active duty in the Navy. He also served in the Marines and Army, retiring from the latter as a lieutenant colonel.
He is best known for innovations in forensic science. Iannarelli developed an ear-identification system (he calls it "earology"), which has been instrumental in prosecuting several high-profile cases, including the 1988 conviction of accused Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk (aka "Ivan the Terrible") in an Israeli court, a verdict overturned five years later.
Appointed to the Cal State Hayward campus police in 1964, Iannarelli asked to step down from the chief's post and served in the department as a lieutenant for seven years before retiring from law enforcement in 1979.
He's since worked as a consultant and ventured into politics, running unsuccessfully for San Jose City Council in the early 1980s.
He was raised in blue-collar south Philadelphia and is the nephew of Frank Rizzo, the city's controversial former police commissioner and mayor.
Iannarelli was a Philadelphia Phillies bat boy during the 1935 season and remembers meeting Babe Ruth in the last year of his career with the Boston Braves. He remains an ageless wonder, maintaining a vigorous workout regimen that includes lifting weights five times a week and playing tennis regularly, and he just returned from a trip to Spain.
Iannarelli cites what he calls the three C's — communication, cooperation and coordination— as the timeless elements of effective campus law enforcement.
He stresses ethics as being just as important and admits he is troubled by highly publicized cases in recent years involving police who overreached or abused their authority.
"A policeman is a public servant and nothing more," he says. "Just because they supply him with a badge and a gun, that doesn't make him a prosecutor or a persecutor. He's out there to give support to the people, and that's it."
Gideon Rubin can be reached at 510-293-2469 or grubin@bayareanewsgroup.com .
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