UNH police chief criticized for protest response to take job in Ayotte administration

UNH Police Chief Paul Dean in a 2018 photograph. (UNH Police photograph)

UNH Police Chief Paul Dean in a 2018 photograph. (UNH Police photograph)

By JEREMY MARGOLIS

Monitor staff

Published: 01-06-2025 4:37 PM

Modified: 01-06-2025 7:28 PM


Longtime University of New Hampshire Police Chief Paul Dean, under scrutiny for his role in the response to a pro-Palestine protest last May, will leave the university to become incoming Governor Kelly Ayotte’s director of citizen services.

The announcement came a week before an internal working group is set to deliver recommendations following its semester-long review of the protest, which ended with 12 arrests.

“Chief Dean’s experience and outstanding character will be a valuable asset to the Governor’s Office as Governor-elect Ayotte and the teamwork to deliver for all of New Hampshire,” Ayotte spokesman John Corbett wrote in a statement.

Dean weathered criticism, including calls for his resignation, from students and faculty for his response to the campus protest, which involved shoving students while wearing plain clothes.

The university has repeatedly contended that his actions were an attempt at de-escalation and an after-action review the department conducted of its own response found that the “use of force was appropriate.”

Dean began as chief of the state flagship university’s police department in 2011, presiding over a department with one of the highest arrest rates of any public university police force in the country, a Monitor investigation found.

“I have very mixed emotions about leaving UNH,” Dean wrote to colleagues last week. “However, after 40 years of full-time law enforcement service, 35 at UNH, including the last 13 years as Chief, it’s time to start a new chapter of public service.”

Dean did not respond to a request for comment on his decision to leave the university and take on a new role outside of law enforcement. He has also repeatedly declined requests for an interview on his response to the protest.

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In a message to members of the university Monday, Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Aaron Howell thanked Dean for his service.

“Throughout his tenure, Chief Dean has earned a national reputation as an innovative and collaborative public safety leader,” Howell wrote. “Under his guidance, the department consistently upheld the highest standards of service and community engagement.”

The protest that ended in arrests at UNH came toward the end of a string of pro-Palestine demonstrations on college campuses across the country last spring.

Dean first engaged with protesters when he spotted one of them holding a flap for a tent. In one widely circulated video, Dean successfully grabbed the tent flap before the interaction devolved into shoving between him and a group of masked protesters.

Dean, who was wearing gray pants and a black shirt, had been criticized for wearing plainclothes rather than being in uniform. He wrote in response to written questions from the Monitor in October that he was “requested to be in plainclothes by the administration,” but he declined to identify which administrator made that call.

About an hour after that interaction, police in riot gear moved in and arrested 12 people, 10 of whom were students. In one arrest caught on video, a UNH officer placed an undergraduate in a headlock before pushing him to the ground.

New university President Elizabeth Chilton convened a 16-member internal working group during her first months in Durham and tasked it with a broad mandate, which included reviewing “UNH’s Student Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities, and any other applicable policies and guidelines, and how these policies informed university actions during the Spring 2024 semester, and specifically on May 1, 2024.”

The working group was asked to conclude its work by Dec. 15, but Chair Nadine Petty wrote in an email to the Monitor Monday that the deadline had been extended to Jan. 15.

Petty wrote that she is “not aware of any potential recommendations or findings being communicated to Chief Dean or anyone” already.

“We have not yet finalized our recommendations or completed the narrative of our findings, so communicating any aspect of this would have been unwise and premature,” she said.

Chilton has so far bucked calls for an external investigation of the police response, which she said would cost the university $150,000. In an interview in September she said that expense didn’t seem warranted given in part that she doesn’t “have any evidence to think there were any laws broken by UNH personnel.”

Chilton, however, committed at the time to “keep an open mind” about next steps following the conclusion of the working group’s review.

During his tenure, Dean introduced more community engagement programs to his department, including self-defense courses and interaction with department’s service dogs, according to university spokesperson Tania deLuzuriaga.

He also served as president of an international campus law enforcement administrators organization.

However, Dean’s department has also been plagued at times by accusations it did not always take sexual assaults on campus seriously enough, according to Abigail Driscoll, the co-executive editor of the student newspaper The New Hampshire.

In contrast, UNH police became known among students for its stringent enforcement of underage drinking laws.

“I think that there’s a general consensus that it’s a bit ridiculous how much they care about busting parties,” Driscoll said during an interview last fall.

In eight of the last 10 years for which data is available, UNH has ranked in the top 10 in alcohol and drug on-campus arrest rates among public university campuses with more than 5,000 students, according to the U.S. Department of Education. In five of those years, UNH ranked first or second in the country. (The two years UNH didn’t rank in the top 10 were in 2020 and 2021, during the pandemic.)