By Josh Siatkowski | Staff Writer
After nearly four years as the assistant chief of police for BUPD, DJ Rodman has been named senior director of public safety and security, where he will oversee his former department along with around 100 staff across four others.
“I’m really blessed to be part of such an amazing community of DPS and to be selected to lead the group,” Rodman said. “I’m thrilled to be able to see where we’re going next and to do it in a place like Baylor where we have such a supportive community.”
Rodman will now lead the approximately 100 staff members across the five different divisions — BUPD, Emergency Management, Physical and Technical Security, Parking Services and Global and Research Security. He plans to meet with each and use their input to plan future objectives.
“The first objective is to hire a replacement for the assistant chief of police … we’re moving pretty quickly on that,” Rodman said. “We want to get that filled to be able to help support BUPD. A second thing that I’m going to be doing is meet with every single individual employee here within DPS and talk about, ‘Hey, what’s going well, where have you seen opportunities to continue to progress and what are some areas where we can support you?’ After that, we’ll have an overall assessment.”
Despite his background with BUPD, Rodman will devote equal time to each of the five BUDPS departments. He served for two months as the interim director after Childers retired in January, and officially stepped into his new role on March 10.
In his decade at Baylor, Childers oversaw the consolidation of Baylor’s five public safety departments, increased the physical security presence on campus and strengthened relationships with outside agencies like Waco PD and the FBI. Rodman said he hopes to bring an equal level of leadership.
“I am humbled and honored to be able to step into that role after Mark, and he’s certainly left an imprint,” Rodman said. “So my responsibility is to continue that forward movement and continue to push us to where we need to be, which is at the forefront of the industry standard.”
While not a direct result of Rodman’s appointment, there’s another development on the BUDPS front. New police vehicles are finally arriving to revamp the BUPD fleet.
Only one new Ford Explorer has joined the fleet, but Rodman said that “you’re going to see a lot more coming in.”
Rodman said the cars were ordered back in 2022, but supply chain issues caused by COVID-19 delayed their arrival. Six more vehicles are being fitted at a shop in Temple with their completion expected soon.
He acknowledged that this was a coincidence rather than his first order as director of public safety.
“I wish I could turn cars around like that, but it’s been a long term plan to get them updated,” Rodman said.
