Jeffrey Godown, who has more than 30 years of law enforcement experience in major metropolitan areas, including the San Francisco and Los Angeles police departments and with the Oakland Unified School District, has been named the interim chief of the Cal State San Bernardino Police Department.

Godown, who started on Jan. 19, will lead the department, which consists of 20 sworn officers, 22 community service officers, 29 parking enforcement employees, five police dispatchers and four administrative employees. He replaces Chief Nina Jamsen, whose official retirement will be Feb. 1. The university will launch a national search for her replacement.

“We are very pleased and fortunate to have Jeff join us as the interim chief of our university police department and look forward to him continuing to lead our efforts on community policing and campus engagement,” said Sam Sudhakar, CSUSB vice president for Information Technology Services and the university Chief Information Officer.

“Policing is about respect, community and compassion. I will lead this department while utilizing this philosophy with everything we do,” Godown said.

Prior to CSUSB, Godown served as chief of the Oakland Unified School District Police Department, where he oversaw 110 sworn and civilian personnel as well as school security officers. Before that he served as a captain and director of the technical services bureau at the University of California, San Francisco Police Department.

He also served as a consultant to the Los Angeles Fire Department, and prior to that in various capacities at the San Francisco Police Department, including interim police chief, assistant chief of the field operations bureau, assistant chief of the Administrative Bureau and commander of the Comstat Bureau. He also served in various roles with the Los Angeles Police Department.

As its mission, the CSUSB Police Department “strives to provide ‘Quality Service’ by providing professional service with honor, integrity, and a commitment to excellence to the community. We perform our mission through diligent crime prevention, victim assistance and emergency response preparedness. We believe campus safety is a community effort and embrace a community partnership and problem-oriented policing philosophy. We strive daily to live by our department motto, ‘Campus Safety through Service.’”