In early July, the Department of Public Safety at MCC was joined by 24-year law enforcement veteran Jamie Zecman. Most recently, Chief Zecman served as Deputy Chief of Public Safety and Emergency Management at Washtenaw Community College (WCC) in Ann Arbor. During that time, she implemented WCC’s first-ever Rape Aggression Defense Program (RAD), was the College’s lead ALICE Instructor and served as Interim Chief.
Chief Zecman holds a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice with high distinction from Ferris State University, and a Master of Arts in Administrative Science from Saginaw Valley State University. She has also completed the Professional Emergency Management Certification (PEM) through FEMA with the Michigan State Police. Her career began as a police officer with the Bay City and Gaylord Police Departments before joining the Saginaw Valley State University Police Department. After 17 years with SVSU PD, she became the first woman chief of the Clio Police Department.
Throughout her career, Chief Zecman has received several commendations, including 2015 Officer of the Year for Saginaw County, and the 2018 Women of Achievement Award in the Social Justice category by the YWCA Great Lakes Bay Region. A member of many Michigan and national law enforcement organizations, Zecman is also on the Mott Community College Criminal Justice Advisory Board.
But wait … there’s more! My City got a little “up close and personal” with Chief Jamie Zecman. Read on!
1. When you were a kid, what did you want to grow up to be?
I wanted to be a police detective! I’ve always been an organized, methodical thinker. As a child, I figured out a way to take my family’s fingerprints by creating a mock ink pad with a No. 2 lead pencil and paper. I would scratch the pencil hard onto the paper, and then press their fingertips to the graphite. I would then transfer the graphite fingerprint to a piece of Scotch tape and store the latent print on a white recipe card. I had a “card catalog” of my entire family’s prints.
2. What was your very first job?
When I was 15 years old, I worked at the “World’s First McDonald’s Mini-Mac” in Bay City, MI. It was within walking distance from home, and they would work around my school and athletics schedules. I give McDonald’s a lot of credit for providing its employees with really great customer service training. That job taught me a lot about “adulting” and I developed skills that I still use to this day.
3. What is your most prized possession?
I have a book that was once blank pages and now contains handwritten responses to a bunch of questions I gave to my great-grandmother a few years before she passed away. We were very close and she passed just days before my first child was born. The book really captured everything to help me preserve her memory and share it with my two daughters.
4. If you had a “warning” label, what would it say?
It would say “WARNING: Quiet area. Do NOT wake!” (My family can fully confirm this.)
5. What career advice would you give to your younger self?
I would tell her to focus on developing good emotional intelligence and to always consider these three questions: Does this need to be said? Does this need to be said BY ME? Does this need to be said by me, NOW? I think that advice would help the younger me both personally and professionally.
6. What is the biggest risk you ever took?
Many years ago, I remarried after divorce with two young daughters. Welcoming a stepfather figure to our small family was a gamble I’m glad I took! My husband Kurt supports my career goals as a partner, and is an awesome step-dad to our daughters.
7. A genie grants you the ability to have infinite amounts of one thing. What is it?
I would wish for foresight; to know what is coming and be prepared to react before it happens. In order to be an effective police leader, you have to be able to see clearly during confusing organizational and environmental realities. Infinite amounts of foresight would be my wish as I navigate as a police leader in 2023. Like (risk management expert) Gordon Graham always says, “Predictable is Preventable.”
