WSSU chief bothered by memories of few he couldn't reach

Willie Bell has met thousands of students in his 11 years as the police chief and director of public safety at Winston-Salem State University.

Most were good students who needed little more from him than a hearty hello, which he was more than happy to provide. Others were hard cases who needed a little nudge in the right direction, which he was also happy to give.

But if anything bothers him as he prepares to retire at month's end, it's the students he couldn't help. Or, as in the case of two students and two former students who've been charged with off-campus murders in the last five years, the ones he never met and never got a chance to help. The most recent charge came last year, when Keith Antoine Carter was charged with the slaying of Sgt. Howard Plouff of the Winston-Salem Police Department at an off-campus party in the city.

"We lost a student, and we lost a police officer," Bell, who is 54, told me last week. "When these things happen, it just ain't the same anymore."

He's quick to emphasize that he was ready to retire, and neither that crime nor the mass shooting at Virginia Tech several weeks later played a role in his decision. But he's not denying that his new life -- living along a golf course in Sanford, maybe running a bakery and taking some engagements speaking to at-risk youth -- won't be more fun than leading law enforcement on a college campus these days.

Bell has given his job his all. By the time he arrived at WSSU in 1997, he'd already played a bit of pro football, been a campus officer in Chapel Hill and Fayetteville, and served as a deputy for Durham County. Here, his department grew as the school grew. Bell, big and friendly, excelled at getting to know students.

When he saw one going wrong, he'd tell that student to stay in school, get that degree and stay out of trouble. "It's so easy to get out there and get with the wrong group," he said last week. "And this peer pressure is still out there … If you look at our jails, they're full of young black men. They're going in in record numbers. I want to head that off, early."

Like a lot of middle-age people, he can't get with rap music and the clothing hanging off of backsides that often goes with the music. You can find both as easily at white colleges as at historically black schools such as WSSU. "I just can't stand somebody showing off their underwear," Bell said. "That irks me more than anything. You got to change that, because that's not going to get you a job."

And, while he acknowledges that many law-abiding students listen to rap, Bell worries about the likelihood of other students "expressing some things they heard in the music."

You can't dismiss that worry. For example, "Shoot the Club Up" is one song that's said to have been playing in a Winston-Salem nightclub in the hour or so before Plouff was shot outside it.

In the days after the shooting, Bell rededicated himself to keeping his ears and eyes open on campus. Working with city police, he has checked out off-campus parties that attract WSSU students. He's been meeting as many students as possible, hoping to connect with the ones who look like they're "about to go astray or something."

"The thing we tell them is … don't bring embarrassment to you, your family and your school," Bell said. "If they plan to do right, we'll help them. If they plan do wrong, we'll still help them -- out the door."

He sits on a school commission that has looked for ways to enhance campus safety. He rightly recognizes that he and other school officials have to balance the freedom of students and faculty with their safety. "We're a state institution, and we can't roll the fence down every night to keep people out," he said.

But he has led his officers in increasing the number of traffic stops on campus. "We get a few nasty remarks now and then: ‘Why are you all stopping us? You're supposed to be campus police,'" Bell said.

He and his officers take the criticism in stride and keep up the stops. So far, the stops haven't produced any major arrests.

Soon, Bell's successor and friend, Pat Norris, leaves the helm of the city police department to take the reins of the campus one.

Bell will leave WSSU with one regret: "You try to save everybody, and you can't save everybody. You can't keep everybody out of jail."

■ John Railey writes local editorials for the Journal. He can be reached at jrailey@wsjournal.com.