MAGNOLIA—Former Florida State Highway Patrolman and white collar crime investigator Eric Plummer is bringing a wealth of crime fighting knowledge to Southern Arkansas University
Plummer, who became university police chief in April, has ambitions to make the campus and the entire Southwest region of Arkansas a safer place. His efforts are already yielding results. SAU is now the only state institution in Arkansas to have membership in the National White Collar Crime Center. What this designation means for area police and first responders is the University will now be able to host free training sessions to better educate them on subjects such as computer fraud and identity theft. What the designation means to students is knowing if they become a victim of such crimes, local officers will have a better handle on how to help.
“When you have a lot of internet usage and a lot of credit card usage, you have a lot of identity theft problems,” Plummer said. “This designation will better educate area law enforcement on computer crimes and financial crimes and it will give us additional tools to combat that to provide an additional level of protection for the community as a whole.”
Another advantage being a part of the National White Collar Crime Center is that police will be better able to prosecute offenses that have occurred. Plummer said he wants to make officers locally subject matter experts in various fields. He is hoping to get state dollars to support this goal.
“I would like to make SAU a regional training center for area law enforcements and first responders,” Plummer said. “Because South Arkansas is viewed as a rural area, there is a real lack of training opportunities in terms of emergency response training. The state dollars seem to go to bigger areas and that equates to better training and better equipment.”
Beyond working with regional emergency personnel, Plummer will manage a staff of eight sworn officers, six who are full-time and two part-time, as well as a staff of around eight student workers who assist the police. University officers patrol on foot, on bicycles and in marked police cars. SAU officers are state certified by the Arkansas Law Enforcement Training Academy and possess full power of arrest.
Although Plummer’s background is more rooted in larger agencies, he said he is looking forward to working at a smaller place because he expects it to have its advantages.
“I will be doing budgetary work and have more leadership responsibility,” he said. “You can effect more change in a department like this than a large 2,500 man agency.”
After working with the Florida Highway Patrol, Plummer was eventually promoted to a sergeant working white collar crime and then went onto the Florida Bureau of Investigation where he investigated such crimes as title fraud and auto thefts. Plummer was the only person in the state for the agency and four other state agencies that worked in the field of computer forensics.
Plummer moved to Magnolia from Deland, Florida which is about 15 miles west of Daytona Beach. His wife Amy, a native of North Little Rock along with son Andrew, 4, and daughter Abigail, 2, recently joined him in Magnolia.
