Temple president John Fry sees development along Broad Street as another step in improving safety

As Temple University closes in on completing the nearly 70 recommendations made in a campus safety audit over two years ago, Temple president John Fry said he sees redevelopment along Broad Street as another key to improving safety.

And he has begun working with developers to encourage it, he said.

The school also is awaiting the results of a staffing study that will help determine how many more police officers it needs, if any. Fry said the study is about two-thirds complete. And the school is contemplating strategies for dealing with large groups of young people who gather and sometimes disrupt areas near campus.

With the spring semester over and summer classes underway, Fry said safety remains his highest priority.

» READ MORE: As new semester gets underway, Temple cites drop in crime alongside new crime-fighting measures

“One of the keys to our future success in recruiting students to Temple is just demonstrating that this is a safe and vibrant and exciting campus with lots to do,” Fry said in a recent interview with The Inquirer. “We just have to keep talking about this so people understand that safety has really improved and we have the infrastructure, we have the investments, and we have the commitment.”

The path to improvement includes upgrading the area along Broad Street, from City Hall to Temple’s health sciences campus in North Philadelphia. To do that, Fry said, developers need to see that the area is safe.

Fry has been looking at areas along the corridor, some of which the university owns and others that it doesn’t. He said it would be ideal to pick three or four spots from its main North Philadelphia campus to Terra Hall — the former University of the Arts’ main administrative building at Broad and Walnut Streets that Temple bought earlier this year and is converting into its Center City campus — to redevelop.

And then he said he would like to pick another three or four spots from the main campus to the health sciences campus farther north on Broad Street.

School officials have to think about what kind of development or programs make sense in those areas, he said, and “make sure that these streets are well lit and feel safe and vibrant.”

Temple will be looking for partners, just as the University of Pennsylvania did in West Philadelphia when he served as its executive vice president from 1995 to 2002 and was the chief architect of the plan to revitalize its neighborhood.

“There’s no way we could possibly do this ourselves,” he said. “The universities ... take the first risks, and if they can prove the value of what they’re doing, usually that creates an incentive for developers to follow along.”

Temple is in early conversations with developers, locally and from places such as New York and Massachusetts, he said, “just to pick their brains.”

They spend the day on the Broad Street corridor and come back to Temple officials with ideas, Fry said.

Improving the corridor will inevitably help with public safety, he said.

“The busiest streets are also going to be the safest streets,” Fry said.

Just a few years ago, Temple was in the throes of a public safety crisis, following the shooting death of on-duty police officer Christopher Fitzgerald. The school hired 21CP Solutions, the firm started by former Philadelphia police chief Charles Ramsey, to conduct a safety audit, which yielded dozens of recommendations.

The university has completed or is on its way to completing 95% of the recommendations from the audit, said Jennifer Griffin, vice president of public safety.

The school has installed new technology, such as license-plate reading cameras and a virtual trainer that allows officers to experience more than 1,000 different scenarios. It also added shuttle bus stops, extended walking escort service to 24 hours a day, updated more than 400 security cameras, purchased equipment including handguns, long guns, and radios, expanded bike and foot patrols, and changed officers’ shifts to 12-hour stints to ensure coverage and allow for alternating three-day weekends.

The school hasn’t adopted every recommendation. For instance, Temple opted not to have both a vice president of public safety and a chief of police. Griffin, who has served in the job for nearly three years, said it was important to her to wear the uniform and work alongside officers.

“I feel very good about where we are and where we’re going,” she said.

Hiring officers remains a challenge, as it is for many police departments around the country.

The department currently has 74 sworn officers, including patrol officers, detectives, and administrators, Griffin said. In March 2024, the university said there were 81, and there were 101 the previous year.

Five new officers just graduated from the police academy last month and four more are in the class that recently started at the academy, Griffin said. The department also is hiring from other departments, she said.

The university is asking officers to sign three-year contracts to boost retention, she said.

Fry said he expects to get the results of the staffing study in the next couple of months and would like to act on the recommendations as swiftly as possible.

“I don’t know what the recommendations are going to be, but I’m prepared to continue to invest,” Fry said.

Andrew Lanetti, president of the Temple University Police Association, the officers’ union, said that Temple needs to be more competitive with its wages and benefits and that he hopes to begin negotiations on a new contract soon. The current pact runs to 2027.

“I believe that Dr. Griffin and President Fry have the best interest of Temple in mind,“ he said. ”Why wouldn’t they?"

But he said the university must focus on hiring more officers.

“We are extremely low staffing-wise when it comes to sworn officers in a patrol capacity. We believe we could partner up and come up with creative solutions to entice more candidates and younger candidates to the field of policing.”

Both Fry and Griffin acknowledged that the large group meetups, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, have been challenging to handle. Griffin said those are probably the biggest safety challenge at the moment.

Over a weekend in April, hundreds of young people caused chaos near the campus with at least five people, including Temple students, assaulted and more than seven arrested.

Griffin said Temple police have made more than two dozen arrests for curfew violations in these incidents. After 9:30 p.m., children under 13 are subject to being stopped by police; for those between 14 and 17, the curfew is 10 p.m.

Griffin said Temple has been working with city police, given that these generally happen on public property. When Temple police hear of a potential meetup or see large groups gathering, they beef up security and police in the area and communicate with local businesses, she said.

But most times, the young people are there to interact with their friends, not to cause problems, she said.

“It is challenging because these are public spaces and so people have a right to stand out there ... as long as they’re not participating in criminal behavior,” Griffin said.

Fry said police have to be ready if it turns into something else.

“All of a sudden something happens and the police have to make a snap judgment about whether something like this is just ... a little bit of mischief or it’s going to turn into something bigger,” he said. “I really have a great appreciation for the judgment of our police because these are close calls.”