By Robert Bao MSU Alumni Magazine Staff Writer

"Off the Pigs!" - a once-popular student chant.

In vogue only three years ago, this crisp, abrasive phrase now rings like a faint echo from a distant era. The "Blue Meanies" of the late sixties have heroically chased and shot their way into best-sellers and prime time television, and almost overnight, the public has seemingly become enthralled with crimefighting. And so it has been at the nation's first degree-granting police school Michigan State's School of Criminal Justice.

Undergraduate enrollment at the school had steadied near 350 through the Sixties. Suddenly, the numbers leapfrogged: 529 in 1970, 823 in 1971, 929 in 1972. The school's number of women students quadrupled to 298. Last year, in the face of mounting applicants and shrinking dollars, the school was forced to limit enrollment to 707, with further cutbacks at hand. Nonetheless, one thing is clear: The school, for nearly four decades one of the nation's most outstanding and innovative, is at last receiving the popular attention it has earned.

Founded in 1935 as the Department of Police Administration – a name it dropped when the word "police" conveyed too brutal an image - the school, like its mother institution, has truly pioneered the field. Among other "firsts" in law enforcement, it established the concept of police-community relations, the study of highway safety, and the field of industrial security. To date 2,908 graduates have passed through its offices on the fourth floor of Olds Hall -- wryly called the "Pig Pen"-- and onto key leadership posts in public and private service.

Internationally its reputation is pre-eminent. Policemen from more than 100 countries from Afghanistan to West Africa have treked to it like pilgrims. Ironically, the school's most damaging blow in public image was caused by its global involvement-when it aided South Vietnam in building a police system that eventually became, in the eyes of critics, a tool of fear and repression.

Towering over the school's modern progress - and criticisms stands a muscular figure whose thick eyebrows and granite-like face disguise his 59 years of age: Art Brandstatter, one of the school's first three graduates in 1938 and its director for the past 27 years. A retired brigadier general of the Army reserves, he has done perhaps more than anyone else in the country to develop the academic field of criminal justice. Well-traveled, experienced and articulate, he is endlessly sought after from coast to coast for lectures, advice and articles; his achievements and awards cram a 16-page vita. Yet, to his credit, he seldom boasts. "We just go about our business," he explains nonchalantly, "and let our graduates speak for us."

One detects a beam of pride when Brandstatter refers to "our graduates," and very understandably so. A sample of just a few of the school's alumni: Kenneth Giannoules, '58, domestic chief of INTERPOL; Rod Puffer, '59, security chief of NASA's space center in Houston; E. Wilson Purdy, '42, public safety director in Florida's Dade County; Allen Andrews, M.S. '64, police chief of Peoria, Ill.; Richard Arther, '51, director of the National Training Center of Lie Detection; Wayne Hall, '50, security head of Ford Motor Co.; Ken Balge, '48, a former Spartan football star, now special assistant to Treasury Secretary Schultz; Robert Mampel, '49, after 23 years with the Secret Service (including the Presidential Protective Division), now Minnesota State Banking Commissioner, plus countless other key men in all branches of law enforcement, including the military, the CIA, the FBI, and the Secret Service.

Ah yes, the Secret Service. When H. Stuart Knight, '48, became its head last fall, Time magazine observed that he had "the solid backing of his fellow agents." But the newsmagazine did not say that many of his fellow agents -- including a significant number of special agents in charge of field offices and other highly-placed agents -- have one common link with their new boss. All graduated from MSU's School of Criminal Justice.

In Michigan, the dominance of Spartans in the field is even more striking. They hold the top two posts of the State Police (John Plants, '57, director, and John Browning, '48, deputy director), head the state corrections department (Perry Johnson, '55), and are police chiefs in dozens of cities including Flint, Jackson and Benton Harbor. And in East Lansing, the top city police seat has become almost a dynastic position for the school's former students.

The bumper crop of alumni seems all the more remarkable when one considers that there are some 750,000 law enforcement officers in the country. What makes the school's 2,908 graduates attain leadership roles so out of proportion to their numbers?

One answer may be the consistently high caliber of the school's faculty. The current full-time staff of 15 consists of men whose collective impact on the field is staggering. They have authored dozens of standard text books, written hundreds of articles, monographs and theses on every aspect of criminal justice, conducted research that has modified government policy, and established institutes, conferences and workshops around the country -- and overseas -- to help advance the state of knowledge.

Leading the staff in seniority is Ralph Turner, a robust 57-year-old Sherlock Holmes buff who looks so avuncular his students call him "Uncle Ralph." Considered a "giant" of the forensic sciences, a recurring expert witness in criminal trials, Turner helped found the Fellow of American Academy of Forensic Sciences (1948), authored the first teaching lab manual in criminalistics (1949), and for his pioneering research on the problem of alcoholism and driving was selected to a task force of the Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement in 1967. He joined the staff in 1947, and along with Brandstatter, has been a mainstay of the school ever since.

Just paces away from Turner's book-filled office is a roomy corner room occupied by a round-faced balding man whose mild-mannered appearance is not deceptive. A Notre Dame product, Lou Radelet is a sociologist who anticipated as early as 1955 the growing issue of "police community relations," a term he coined and then elaborated upon in two standard textbooks. After devoting several years to help desegregate and "humanize" the police, he joined the staff in 1963 and directed MSU's unique "National Center on Police and Community Relations."

The center was absorbed last year into the embryonic "Center for Criminal Justice Systems." It was established by a federal grant totaling $755,000 for three years by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA). Director John McNamara, a man of short, precise phrasing, explains his main purpose is "to strengthen and develop graduate programs in criminal justice." After earning his Ph.D. at UCLA, he joined the faculty in 1968.

Another newcomer is a former politician, Zolton Ferency, who admits ruefully he has "the dubious distinction of founding the 'Dump LBJ movement." A onetime Democratic candidate for governor, Ferency, 52, resigned- his party's state chairmanship post in 1967 and enrolled in the C-J graduate program. "The question of law and order had become the most critical political issue in the country," he explains, "and I wanted to learn how academic experts viewed these issues." After getting his M.S. in 1972, a faculty vacancy opened in his area of expertise: Criminal law. He agreed, and his students - many of them policemen - have since marveled at Ferency's classroom objectivity and lack of partisanship.

There are many more outstanding men in the department -- men like Dr. Leon Weaver, an expert in industrial security, and Dr. Victor Strecher, who now oversees the revision of the school's cuvricula - but these few snapshots highlight the versatility of the group that Brandstatter has corraled into the faculty.

Though the strength of a school is mainly determined by its faculty, over the decades one strength of the school has been its adaptability to change. At its inception in 1935, the program required five years for a B.S. and heavily emphasized criminalistics - things like fingerprint detection - and field training of 18 months under the supervision of the Michigan State Police. During field training students were paid a dollar a day.

After Brandstatter took charge in 1947, the program gradually eased out of the State Police. Within two years, recalls Brandstatter, "in the process of assuming responsibility for the school, the program was completely reversed and the one and-a-half year field training requirement was reduced to three terms, then two, and finally to one term." Courses such as karate were dropped, though students could still take them via another department. The total budget for 1947: $9,550.

Over time a number of courses, or "fields of concentration," were added to the curricula - corrections, traffic, security, forensic science and delinquency and crime prevention. Field training was replaced by the "Practicum," worth up to 12 credits, in which students get to ride with real-life cops and observe the current techniques in law enforcement.

Following its pioneering tradition, the school established in 1970 the nation's first comparative criminal justice program. Held every other summer at the University of London's Bedford College, participants get to rub shoulders with British constables, visit the Royal Courts of Justice, and explore Britain's problems of crime and methods of crime control. Joan Moore, '73, who went two years ago, called the two-month program "fantastic." Her one complaint: "I didn't get to see Scotland Yard's 'Black Museum' because they bar women."

Currently the school is undergoing yet another fundamental change in curricula. Instead of requiring undergraduates to concentrate in a given field by their junior years, the school now leans toward the so-called "generalist" approach.

"We've learned," explains Brandstatter, "as a result of the increasing and continuous upgrading of men who serve the criminal justice system, that there's greater mobility in the system than ever before. It would be a disservice to give our students a concentrated program with a narrow orientation. Rather, we want to expose them in class to the general field and let them make their own decision. Those who want to specialize can then do so at the graduate level."

At the graduate level, enrollment in the last five years has stabilized at close to 100. In addition, about a half dozen earn their Ph.D.s each year. The school's current annual budget of $365,252, though modest in light of the outpour of student interest, measures the growth of the school.

As Brandstatter enters his 28th year at the school's helm, his forward vision cannot obscure the vast accomplishments of the past. Once in a while, he savors that past. His office shelves are filled with mementos and statues from the Far East, the Middle East, and Europe. Hanging on a wall is a plaque from the Republic of South Korea commemorating his help to that country's criminal justice system. He also keeps a massive file of every foreign contact he has had during his tenure here.

The most unforgettable: His role in the MSU Vietnam Project more than 10 years ago. It all started, he remembers, one day in 1954 when his phone rang. The dean of a college was at the other end:

"Tell me, Art, how'd you like to go to South Vietnam for two weeks?"

"Sure," Brandstatter said jokingly, "When do you want me to leave, tomorrow?"

"Young man, I'm not kidding," growled the dean.

It was quickly explained that the State Department, wanting to help rebuild Vietnamese society from domestic conflagration, had requested that MSU provide the technical assistance. The university readily agreed to send an advisory team, including a contingent of public safety experts, to help bring order to the fledgling government of Premier Ngo Dinh Diem. Brandstatter, who as a State Department consultant in postwar Germany helped build that nation's police system, found the adventurous offer impossible to resist. "Within two weeks," he says, "we were on a plane to Vietnam."

Once there, he found the nation chaotic and divided, its police straggled. Police officials were reluctant to provide Brandstatter with pertinent data. Still, by going after the facts the way Columbo hounds millionaires, he eventually managed to assess the situation and drew up a proposal. When the State Department gave the green light, he set about to recruit experts for his team. However, he realized then that "no police in the country could deal with all facets of the Vietnamese problem."

Among other specialists he needed counter-espionage agents, and about the only place he could find them was in the military police corps. So he recruited there, and there, apparently, is where the CIA infiltration - if it occurred -took place. "A number of applicants came to campus," recalls Brandstatter. "Everyone who came showed us credentials indicating they were military officers. If any of them were from the CIA, I didn't know about it, and I still don't know about it." About four of them were hired and put on MSU's payroll. At its peak, the MSU Police Advisory Group totaled 26, with Ralph Turner as the head.

The rest is history. Diem began abusing his power, and was ultimately assassinated in a palace assault. "We were trying to develop a decentralized state police system," explains Brandstatter, adding that what he had in mind was alien to the phalanxes that Diem later used to terrorize dissenters. "Diem got disenchanted with us because he insisted that police chiefs in the provinces be responsible to him rather than the decentralized system we recommended." In any event, when Ramparts magazine exposed MSU's involvement several years later, the police group was given credit for just what it sought to avoid. In hindsight, Brandstatter says, "I think if we do this again it should be handled through a U.S. governmental institution or perhaps through another institution of  higher learning in the native country."

At that time, of course, as Turner points out, there was no governmental agency equipped to handle the task. Turner, who headed the Police group, does not regret his involvement because then the whole country backed the idea of combating Communism. "The U.S. was filling a vacuum after World War II as far as leadership," he explains. "The government was implementing the results of John Foster Dulles running round the world doing all his things like SEATO, etc. These things I see as typically American goodwill gestures.

"As far as the police project was concerned, however, this was a totally new experience for the U.S. government. There were precious few people in the country - except for a few old ones in the State Department - who had the expertise. MSU was completely ill-prepared to do the job, but given the spirit of the time, everyone said, 'I'll go out there and help."'

Turner now remains philosophical. Puffing his cigar pensively, he declares: "MSU is learning. For example, we're not jumping in with both feet into the Middle East." Clearly, after the protected Vietnam fiasco, the American government has learned too. No longer is this country chasing falling dominoes abroad; Watergate has produced enough falling dominoes at home. Likewise, the School of Criminal Justice now focuses mainly on the domestic problems in law enforcement.

"The most significant issue today," says Lou Radelet, "is policecommunity relations." He explains there are two sharply divided schools of thought: "Traditionalists," as Radelet calls them, believe social work is a lot of bull, disdain such Supreme Court decisions as Miranda, and favor the tough, fist-flying approach of Mike Hammer. Many cops-on-the-beat, observes Radelet, are traditionalists.

On the other hand, the broaderbased school of thought stresses community service by policemen. "MSU has proponents of both schools," says Radelet, "but there are no all-out hardliners. We have had Dirty Harrys on our faculty in the past, but not at the present."

In fact, if anything, the MSU faculty tilts toward the community service point of view. Ferency, for example, has always been an active civil libertarian. Radelet himself spearheads this movement. Still, he says: "We're looking for police types to represent the traditional point of view. We need it to balance our staff."

However, traditionalists may be harder to come by these days. The East Lansing police department, as well as others, has already begun implementing a number of community service projects. When Stephen Naert, a product of the school, took charge last year, one of his first steps was to de-militarize the uniforms of some officers, substituting fraternity-like blazers. "In his own quiet way," says Radelet approvingly, "he's introducing changes."

Brandstatter believes that another change is needed to lower the nation's crime rate. "The present fragmented autonomous police system must be restructured into some form of regional system," he notes. "A regional structure would be more responsive to society's problems and would permit a sophisticated personnel program to be developed in order to attract a greater percentage of our best young people with clearly-delineated career opportunities for them.

Whether these changes will improve crime-fighting remains a question. For one thing, President Nixon's Supreme Court - in a flurry of decisions hacking down the dicta set by the Warren Court -has given traditionalist cops much more elbowroom. to operate. Secondly, despite modem techniques of crime control the rate of crime continues escalating in the streets. Whatever the solution - if there is a solution - one thing is sure: MSU's School, of Criminal Justice will lead the search.

Hopefully, students, with their interest, and the university, the Legislature and federal agencies, with their financial support, will all continue to assist the school in this pursuit. It may not necessarily put an end to all crime, but at least it will help erase the epithet that so recently haunted the school: "Off the Pigs."
 

Rod Puffer '59 (pointing) Security Chief, NASA Houston Space Center
 
 

Wayne Hall, '50  Director of Security, Ford Motor Company	Perry Johnson, '55 Director, Michigan Dept. of Corrections	Robert Mampel, '49 Minnesota Banking Commisioner (former Secret Service agent)
E. Wilson Purdy, '42 Public Safety Director, Metro Dade County (Miami, FL)	Kenneth Giannoules, '58   Domestic Chief, INTERPOL	Ken Balge, '48   Special Assistant, Secretary of the Treasury

 
Reprinted with permission from Robert Bao, Editor,  MSU Alumni Association Magazine, March 1974
 

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