Campus Police Add Operation Chiefs

The Harvard University Police Department will welcome two veteran officers from the Boston and Cambridge forces as its new deputy chiefs of operations.

The hiring of James Claiborne and Michael Giacoppo for the newly-created role is part of HUPD’s ongoing restructuring in response to feedback—including the recommendations of a committee convened last year to address alleged racial profiling by the university police.

Giacoppo started as an officer in the MIT Police Department, serving for three years. He moved on to the Cambridge Police Department, where he spent 32 years, working his way up to the position of superintendent before retiring in June.

CPD Public Information Officer Frank T. Pasquarello called Giacoppo “the perfect choice for the police department,” citing Giacoppo’s involvement in investigating numerous high-profile crimes in Cambridge.

Elaine B. Driscoll, a spokesperson for the Boston Police Department, said that Claiborne, who comes to Harvard after 30 years in the BPD, “has been a tremendous asset to the Boston Police Department.”

Claiborne said that the “Boston Miracle” of the 1990s, a period that saw large declines in violent crime, was a highlight of his years in the BPD.

“[Commissioner] Paul Evans was the architect [of the ‘Miracle’], and I was his general contractor,” he said. “We organized the entire Boston police. We simply turned it upside down.”

Claiborne has worked in a wide variety of Boston neighborhoods, including Jamaica Plain, the Back Bay, the South End, and Mattapan.

“Harvard will be another neighborhood with its own set of needs, its own set of issues,” he said. “I’ve coped with those in the past, I think pretty well.”

In his time in the BPD, Claiborne attained the position of superintendent in charge of field services, the third-highest position in the police department. At that point, he was the highest-ranking minority member of the BPD, according to the Boston Globe.

He was demoted from this position following the death of Emerson College student Victoria Snelgrove, according to the Globe. Snelgrove was killed at a 2004 Red Sox pennant celebration when a pepper pellet fired by a police officer struck her in the eye.

Driscoll praised Claiborne’s work in his current position in Mattapan, where she said he has “played a major part in decreasing crime and increasing quality of life for residents.” According to the Globe, homicides in the B-3 district, which includes Mattapan and North Dorchester, dropped from 24 in 2007 to 12 in 2008 under Claiborne’s command.

According to an e-mailed statement from HUPD spokesman Steven Catalano, one deputy chief will oversee day-to-day operations on the Allston and Longwood campuses and one will perform the same duties on the Cambridge campus.