John Peach, Oral History

Recorded: August 6, 2009
Interviewed by Craig Simpson
Transcribed by Lae'l Hughes-Watkins

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[Interviewer]: Good morning. The date is August 6, 2009, and my name is Craig Simpson. Could you please state your name?

[John Peach]: I'm John Peach. I'm the Chief of Police and Director of Public Safety at Kent State University.

[Interviewer]: John, where were you born?

[John Peach]: I was born in Akron, Ohio in 1948.

[Interviewer]: Where did you go to school?

[John Peach]: I graduated from high school from Rootstown High School. Immediately went in the Air Force in 1966. Spent four years in the service. Got an early discharge to come to Kent State University Police Department and be hired as a police officer. Subsequent to that hiring, I received my bachelor of arts degree in law enforcement administration -- which isn't offered anymore -- and also a master's in public administration.

[Interviewer]: And, I'm sorry, where did you get your master's?

[John Peach]: Here at Kent State.

[Interviewer]: And what year was that?

[John Peach]: That was 1970 -- no, I'll take that back: 1984.

[Interviewer]: Backing up a little, when did you start as a police officer here at Kent State?

[John Peach]: September 17, 1970.

[Interviewer]: What are -- or maybe I should say what were the standard duties of a KSU police officer back then? Just some examples.

[John Peach]: It was very much a commissioned police department. Had police officers. In the aftermath of the May shootings, it was an environment where more and more police officers were being hired to provide for anticipated issues and problems that might be occurring as a result of the shootings. So the department grew from thirty-some officers during the 1970s to seventy-some officers in 1971. Then there was a lot of others that were hired as uniformed security that were not armed. So, we had around 100 officers. Most of them were armed by 1971 as a result of the shootings and anticipation of more problems and concerns.

[Interviewer]: You first arrived on campus in September of 1970?

[John Peach]: Yes.

[Interviewer]: Do you remember where you were in May?

[John Peach]: Yes, May 4th I was home on leave from having spent three years in Germany as an Air Police Officer, and I had spent little over five weeks home visiting. Then May 4th, I flew out from Cleveland to go to my next base in Washington State -- McChord Air Force Base, which is near Tacoma -- and I got off the plane and looked at the newsstands and that's when I found out the shootings had taken place. But I was familiar with the problems taking place at Kent State because at the time my father was the university fire marshal and my mother was a secretary of history; and I had previously worked for the [Kent State] Police Department, not as a commissioned officer but for directing traffic for football games and the like. So I was familiar with the campus and knew the people.

[Interviewer]: How would you describe the campus prior to the events of 1970?

[John Peach]: It was a very quiet campus; it was somewhat conservative. When I say conservative, there wasn't anything to look at it being any different from a college or university anywhere. I had been a part-time employee in the summer time -- 1966 -- moving furniture into residence halls and so forth. I worked out of a supply center for four months before going in the service. So I got to know the university fairly well as very quiet, the traditional beanies the freshmen were wearing, and so forth. Most of the residence halls were gender related; they weren't mixed.

[Interviewer]: They still called those "dinks" then -- the beanies?

[John Peach]: Yeah.

[Interviewer]: [laughs]

[John Peach]: You're suppose to dink -- that's what they say --dink in front of an upperclassman

[Interviewer]: Oh, I didn't know that.

[John Peach]: [laughs]

[Interviewer]: What made you decide to become a KSU police officer?

[John Peach]: I had been involved in some activities with the police department before I got out of the service. As a matter of fact, my father was the assistant security director for the police department, 1963 to 1968. He was the assistant chief, then he became fire marshal. I knew the chief at the time, John Schwartzmiller, around where I grew up. He was in the state patrol, my father had been in the state patrol, so he knew us when we were kids. When we went in the service, he said, "When you get out of the service, come on back. We got a place with you at the University Police Department." I knew that going into the service in 1966, and I really wanted to. Having taken aptitude tests in the military, I was informed that I was best placed in the military police. So that's the track I took.

I didn't have ambitions to be a police officer. I just turned eighteen, didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew I didn't want to go to college even though I was going to get almost free tuition because of my parents living here, working here. But I didn't think I was really mature and prepared for it. So '66, in a rural area, you're either going to college or you go into the military, especially with the fact that Vietnam was starting to crank up -- so that's where I went. My twin brother followed me there too. Having four years of military police experience, working town patrols and the Benelux countries -- Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg out of Germany and so forth -- gave us a lot of experience. We dealt with all military incidents, problems, crimes that took place in those areas, and we had the U.S military work with the local police. When we went back to Tacoma, I spent from May to September there; it was similar law enforcement duties there. So I was prepared, I enjoyed law enforcement, and I was continued to be contacted by Chief Schwartzmiller who had asked if I still had intentions to join. I said, "For sure." The fact that the shootings took place didn't change the desire to go back to Kent State, which I was familiar with.

[Interviewer]: What did you enjoy about law enforcement?

[John Peach]: Well, helping people, that was the big thing. I thought I could make a difference. That may be a little altruistic, but it really felt that you could help those that are suffering from victimization, from accidents, get the bad guys in a proper way. I just thought it was a way to serve the public.

[Interviewer]: What was the atmosphere like on campus in the fall of 1970?

[John Peach]: It was really strange. Strange because there were rumors constantly going. Rumors blowing through the FBI to the local police to the state patrol to all the police--beware there was activists that were going to try to get back at the state, state of Ohio, at Kent State for the shooting, and so forth. There was obviously a lot of turmoil taking place politically speaking with, with young Americans and establishment, and so forth. And because those rumors were coming from the FBI and the state, you sort of attach serious considerations to them. To the point, where we were suggested, it was suggested to us to buy carbines.

[Interviewer]: To buy what?

[John Peach]: To buy carbines.

[Interviewer]: Carbines.

[John Peach]: 30-caliber carbines. Most of the police officers at that time at Kent State University purchased military surplus 30-caliber carbines to use in our vehicles as rifle, because the concerns were snipers from college towers and any number of things. I don't think anyone was absolutely convinced that might happen, but because of the paranoia at every level -- from the city of Kent, to the state of Ohio, to the university administration, to any number of things -- there seemed to be such a thick environment and atmosphere of uncertainty. "What's going to happen next?" School was not open at the time, they were anticipating opening the university up after being closed that long, and so nobody knew what to expect. That was the environment there. At the same time, there was a tendency to try to be very vigilant, to find out any observations of what we would call some radical influences that would try to create a riotous environment.

[Interviewer]: Did the KSU police coordinate efforts with units of the FBI or the Ohio State Highway Patrol?

[John Peach]: Oh, sure. When I was on leave in 1968 from Germany, I came and was asked to have a microphone on me when Jerry Rubin was here. Jerry Rubin was a very well known SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] activist at the time that was going to be speaking on campus. He spoke up on Front Campus. And at the time he was advocating that children should kill their parents, that at thirty years of age and older you just aren't very reliable on knowing where the country should go. Really bizarro because everybody obviously turns thirty and older. But the FBI was there -- some of the FBI -- the state patrol undercover was there. There were certain buttons that we knew. And I was with a female employee of the police department, a police officer who was given primary responsibility with the tape recorder, we were there with her at the time. I really didn't have the tape recorder but she had it and I was there with her, sort of an informal bodyguard. And, of course, I had the shortest hair of anyone important. It states, I think because I was in the military, but it didn't matter. Anyway, it was an environment of suspicion and certainly at that time. The FBI and the state officials and locals all worked together, certainly in 1970, '71 and onward. Tthere were continual investigations, meetings, and so forth of administration, investigators. I wasn't there at the time. I saw them on campus, but I didn't tend the meetings until later on.

[Interviewer]: Did any of those rumored radical activities that you talked about come to fruition, or were they snuffed out in advance?

[John Peach]: The ones that we're talking about with were the real extreme snipers. We also were aware of the fact there were a lot of people that wanted to put Kent State back on the map. Not necessarily with killings, but wanted to make a real statement. And that was really a point a lot of people came from around the country that fall, and the next two years during the fall and spring: to protest the shootings. We had a lot of civil unrest during those times requiring a lot of involvement, and mutual aid assistance from local law enforcement. The university was very careful not to bring in the state patrol at that time because it would give a higher mark of: Here is the state of Ohio trying to give a sense of force to the university students.

There was a new president: Glenn Olds was here. Bob White left in early January of '71, I think. [Olds] was here to bring reconciliation of peace, or tried to. One of the statements he made to us within the first month he was here -- we were in the Music and Speech Building in the auditorium -- and he said university suffers civil unrest with many people. He's not going to be using us, the police department; he's gonna call on the freshmen football team to handle it. Right then and there we figured there was an issue problem, that he may not be on top of things. But that's what we experienced at the time. Nonetheless, no football player was asked to come in subsequent to the unrest.

[Interviewer]: Was he serious about the football team?

[John Peach]: Yes, he was serious in purpose. He was serious in desire. Obviously none of the police, administration or us believed it. I think there was a lot of eyes rolling going on. But that was his reconciliation. He had a pastoral background, he was a minister. A very decent man, very decent man. Had believed very strongly in reconciliation and peace, and tried his darndest for that to take place. He really left here very forlorn, beat up by it. A few years later I can tell you a story about that that's important.

But it just didn't turn out the way he wanted to because we kept having for three or four years afterwards major civil unrest. There were thousands of people protesting May 4th and the state of Ohio cover-up, and the federal government's cover-up, and the Vietnam War, and "Kent State" was the battle cry around the country. If you wanted to protest the war, you want to protest the federal government, come to Kent State. So there were so many outsiders that were part of the civil unrest that had a higher level of tolerance of police response. They wanted to stand tough. But most of the time they would be in the back of the crowd encouraging the crowd to go forward, so they're not gonna be the first ones arrested. So after awhile the strategy was just find them, so that if there was a real reaction-- civil unrest -- we're trying to pick them up as we see them. But they're very quick to slide in the crowd and out. They were very experienced in this.

[Interviewer]: You had mentioned that the police and the highway patrol didn't want to overtly announce their presence on the campus. Were there more subtle activities done, like surveillance of radical groups?

[John Peach]: Yes, tremendous amount of surveillance. A lot of plain-clothes undercover agents from -- certainly the FBI, but a lot from the Ohio State Patrol. I knew them for a few years. There was a lot of investigative intelligence taking place.

[Interviewer]: Was SDS still around then?

[John Peach]: Yes it was, but it was fading. The fact [is] you would think the SDS would be regenerated and renewed, but the people that were the most active in the SDS were not there anymore. They had gone their route. There's others that were trying to regenerate the unrest but the SDS was just a soft remnant of what it used to be in '68.

[Interviewer]: What other groups took its place?

[John Peach]: I can't recall right now. But there's an acronym almost every year, there's a different student group because you start getting civil orders, restraining orders on the students against the government or something else. They'll change their name and they're not part of that group, so it's real fluid in terms of what they're calling themselves. It wasn't a standard well-known student activist group that was doing it. There's some exceptions -- the Student Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade. R-C-Y-B.

[Interviewer]: I've heard of that one.

[John Peach]: Was somewhat active and they came. The biggest contingent was from Cleveland and they would come from Amherst, Massachusetts and so forth to come there. They were probably the most visible. But they weren't on campus -- I mean, they didn't have student activity as a student group here. They would just come on campus and they would have fliers like crazy and then they would be here during student unrest generating interest and opposition to the state of Ohio.

[Interviewer]: A lot of people whom I 've interviewed who were here before and around May 4 often make distinctions between the students and the outsiders. Did the KSU police make that distinction?

[John Peach]: Oh, sure. But the attitude was so bad. One of the real shocking revelations I got when I got on the police department, was how much students despised authority, police in uniform. And again, as I said, I came into police work to be, to be a change agent, to serve people, to help them. A lot of times people were spitting on us -- women, and coeds and stuff. These are not radicals as you know. Radicals, they just didn't like it. We'd go into the residence halls on calls and we'd have to be careful cause people would see us coming and throw out the glass bottles down and be crashing. Fortunately, thank God, nobody was hit. But only by luck I think. That was the kind of environment.

At night it became even more risky because obviously the anonymity of actions. We didn't work in with guns and we weren't dealing with knives, but we're talking about rocks and bottles that would come out of nowhere. You'd have to be careful. But even in daylight, when you're in crowds and people are calling you names and spitting at you. You're not gonna try to race in there and grab them --fifty to a hundred people in there. You just gotta put up with it.

So that was a real shock. It was really depressing, because I'm saying: "Where are they at?" I didn't do anything to them, I'm trying to help them. The thing to do is not just be against them but really show your hatred. It seemed like hatred by many people. I would say most, not all, but most people. You just can't go anywhere, people just giving you sneers just by being in their presence

[Interviewer]: Rosann Rissland, in her interview, talked about riot control. Could you talk a little bit about the kind of training and preparation you did for that?

[John Peach]: Yeah, we really improved training quite a bit. Of course that wasn't hard to do from before the shootings took place. We relied on the state patrol for the training, and we would go primarily to major training sessions in Sun Beau [Valley Farm] near Ravenna. It's a horse thing, near Ravenna. And you'd have multiple departments there that are going for two days at a time, different formations, mass movements and so forth, use of gas -- inert gas -- because you didn't want to use CN or CS near the horses and stuff. Trying the face masks and the helmets and the big black jackets, I mean really heavy military black jackets. We would practice at night and during the daytime, trying to get people familiar with military movements. It was very military-oriented training in terms of riot control. You're talking about a large number of people getting to be use wedges, diamonds, different ways, and having arrest teams in the middle and then exercising different deployments of gases through thirty-seven millimeter shotguns, rocket launchers and then hand canisters. We really had significant training on that. Most people had not been in the military but certainly far more had some military experience than you commonly see in police departments today. With the exception of the last five or six years, you really don't have a lot of experience people having military experience to know formations, and orders, and marching. It was goofy. But with some of the veterans that we had, it was very strong to show the others how to march. You have to be in unison, be able to handle commands.

[Interviewer]: Rosann also mentioned that the tunnels were used.

[John Peach]: Yes.

[Interviewer]: Could you talk about that a little?

[John Peach]: There are tunnels that are underneath the university. Old tunnels. Most of them are no longer used because they've advanced and created larger tunnels that are handling electrical systems and stuff now. But these tunnels were probably, I'd say, four foot in diameter, and one particular time we used a tunnel from Rockwell [Hall] all the way up to the administration building which is now the Cartwright Hall because we had gone there. ROTC was out of there right now. We went there at night and there were thousands of people outside ranting. We went in there because that's also where the President's office was, and executive offices. The police department went in there, and all of a sudden we're inside the building and you got thousand's of people outside. Now certainly we could come out but the administration with Glenn Olds at the time was so concerned about conflict. Avoid the conflict, avoid the conflict. Which is sort of frustrating when, as police officers, you're not engaged, because it emboldened a lot of the protesters -- a lot, as a matter of fact. But it was decided, okay, how do we get out of this Rockwell [situation] because it getting to be ten or eleven o'clock at night. Everybody's was having a great time outside, saying, Well, there not going to come out, so we're just going to keep them in there.

So, the decision was made to go in the bottom of Rockwell, a couple of officers at a time. We went though the tunnels, probably took fifteen minutes to be able to get all the way to the top, and no one really knew we were out for a few hours afterwards. But other than that, we wouldn't use the tunnels much for any kind of deployment or operation. But that was a very clear time that we did, and it was very helpful to avoid any conflict.

[Interviewer]: And that objective you mentioned, of conflict, was that attributed as a direct response to the events of what happened on May 4th?

[John Peach]: Yes. They were just fearful of more shootings and more deaths. It was so overwhelmingly concerned that is was not realistic quite frankly. Ee were better trained, nobody's going to be shooting anyone. But they were just so fearful, especially the President and the Trustees: "Well we can't handle another shooting, what about the police?" And the police were getting much more training, it's a far different trained force then we had before May 4th.

[Interviewer]: It's interesting listening to this because in books I've read, for example, there seems to be this perception that protests ended immediately after May 4. It sounds like it still continued.

[John Peach]: Oh, absolutely not. [The protests] were as large as May 4th. In fact it spread downtown; [we're] talking about thousands of students that were downtown. And we had to deploy -- we brought in departments from all over the place. It was really a circus and I say that negative aspect at night -- we're using flares -- and I remember over a hundred of us, our department, Kent City, Stow, Ravenna, and so forth, went from the corner of Lincoln and Main Street through the arch and trying to remove the thousands of people that were on top of Hilltop [Drive], and they were throwing bottles. They would break the lip of the bottle and they'd throw it, and it would become like that [describes it with his hands]. It penetrates the ground in a pitch, you've got it?

So we have these big black jackets and we're deploying the gas and so forth. Had flares to see all these people. One evening, whether it was a Friday or Saturday, we had to do it three times. We had to clear it three times. We lost the territory twice and went up there. But it was a festive atmosphere. At the same time, it was mixed with people who were wanting to do things anonymously, That's the psychology of crowd control: it becomes hot and very risky when you have lots of people. Especially when you have lots of people and it's dark, because people who would not normally do things will do things because they think they can get away with it, whether caught up in the moment and so forth. We had that quite a bit.

We went downtown on a number of occasions for students -- '71,'72,'73 -- go clearing people out of the streets, Water Street, Main Street, going down blocking all the streets. Traffic couldn't go, they're all chanting and roaring and stuff. And we would handle it differently this time. The fact is what you'd have is thousands of students in a summer-like nice atmosphere, screaming and yelling "Down with the state of Ohio, down with the federal government." And though it was impeding traffic, is it worthwhile to engage with a hundred-plus officers those people at night? We'd probably think secondly about it. And there was very little dialogue. One of the real complications was that nobody wanted to talk to each other. That was a real problem back in '70 and it was problem back in '71, 2, 3, and 4. Nobody wanted to humble themselves to say, What are you after, what can I do?

Now clearly one of the problems by the police was trying to figure out who's really leading this. There was multiple leaders that were not of the university. You were talking about well-known activists that were here and they were known to us, but they weren't really student status. But they were extraordinary students, because they're very charismatic in their approach. Then you would have people like Chick Canfora and Alan Canfora that were significant, but they were nowhere near as significant as they became back in 1977 during the Gym Annex [controversy]. You had other people that preceded them that were capturing the attention of a lot of students. Again, people would come from all over the place, because this is Kent State and this is the time people aare protesting. And the cameras were there, television cameras all over the place, and it was just a spectacle.

[Interviewer]: I was going to ask you about that Gym Annex -- "Tent City," -- which I think was '77,'78, if I'm correct?

[John Peach]: Yes.

[Interviewer]: How did KSU police respond to that situation?

[John Peach]: Frankly, it was remarkably good response, the [administrative] response. Glenn Olds was still here, was on his way out. 1978, he left. Brage Golding came. Mike Schwartz was in for him for a little while, but then Brage Golding was here. I was investigation supervisor at the time, and I had a lot of liberty the chief gave me, Bob Malone, to deal with this issue being his liaison to all the local police and the student groups. So I was really the point person for the University Police Department for communicating with the Canforas and everyone else who were upset with the gym, on behalf of the president. I certainly can't speak for the president, but I did for the president with his knowledge, because we didn't want to expose him out there. Because the cameras there and we didn't know how he was going to react with that, when quite frankly he was just crushed when that happened. He didn't react well in public, he lost his temper and was never good, never good. So I was very happy to do that and I managed to develop relationships of trust after a period of time with the student leaders, non-student leaders and so forth. It wasn't a trust where you bring them home for coffee, but you believe what they're saying. And with that in mind we continued to tell them that we do not want to overreact on your protests. We don't know what's taken place, let us know, and we'll accommodate you. Obviously we're not gonna consent to violating laws but if you wanna have rallies and stuff we'll help you on it because, I said, we don't want anyone to get hurt and that's what they were listening to. So they were fairly forthcoming -- not a hundred percent, but certainly pretty well in terms of what we're gonna be, trying to get as many people as we can on the Commons at this time. And o.k, I'll be there if we can help you.

Tent City started and that was a terrible decision from my perspec -- no, it's a terrible decision from a logical [perspective]. There was a Trustees meeting that took place, I can't remember the exact date. May, I think it was May. Tent City started and there was a bunch of non-students had come from out of town because it was the May 4th anniversary, seven years later, and they were not happy with the university's response of delaying or stopping construction. So they started putting tents up outside Taylor [Hall], near where the Annex is right now, and I remember going up to my boss, Chief Bob Malone, and I said, "Chief, I can take those tents down?" I said, "If we wait, right now there's five or six tents, if we wait there's gonna be fifty or sixty. We can do it now there weren't any photographers around." I can handle that with just the options available, low key, just get it out and they would have done it. And he says, "No, let me check with the president." And I said, Oh, no.

The fact is we operate under penalty [if] we don't tell the president everything we do. But I don't want anyone to bother it, I don't want any problem with it. Sure enough, I'm telling you, two days later there's about fifty, after that three or four days there's over a hundred tents. We had little kids living over there, we had animals, we had people coming from all over the place living on it -- now what do you do with them? They don't want to leave.

Anyways, it was a terrible decision, because that could have been easily avoided at the time. But as a result we communicated with them, and as I said I was a point-person by design on it. And I think that was really effective so they knew who to go to, they knew they weren't going to go to the president. The president wasn't always going to talk to them, but they knew they could talk to me, to know what kind of reaction would we get from the university if we do this and this. I was very candid with them.

[Interviewer]: Having been here now for four decades, how would you compare the kinds of issues you had to deal with then to say to now?

[John Peach]: Wow, there's no comparison. Students seem to be more academic-oriented. They seem to be less distracted with national affairs that would cause them to respond in rallies, in demonstrations. So it's pretty nice right now.

[Interviewer]: Did you have to deal with that "College Fest" situation?

[John Peach]: Well, we anticipated much less than what took place, but it was very clear that there needed to be a great reaction of mutual aid. All the officers I had working responded, other communities were calling, were responding too. It's a total different environment now. There was a time even in the 70s, even the 80s, that if you were there drinking illegally, or creating problems and you knew the police were coming you'd be leaving. Well now that's not the case, they wait for you, because they've got tge crowd, they have darkness. They wanna show the police are being unreasonable, they're just having a good time, leave them alone. When you have that kind of mentality, then it becomes more difficult for any kind of reasonable dialogue on it.

[Interviewer]: Would you say the relationship between the town and the university is better than it was in 1970?

[John Peach]: Yes, it is. It is. I can't even emphasize how bad it was for many, many years and there's still hard feelings. But it's far, far better, much, much improved over the years. What exacerbates that continued improvement is those "College Fest" issues, déjà vu to May 4th. Some [Kent citizens] weren't even alive [back then], but they have kids and maybe they're old enough to be parents of them and they're scared to death. What are these students all about, why are they doing that? It's creating hardship because they get on their phone and call their councilman and say we gotta do something about that. The councilman gets upset and goes to city council and city manager and the police and says we gotta stop these wild students. So it's gotten much better.

[Interviewer]: Are there any other thoughts about May 4 you would like to share?

[John Peach]: Well, I think had there been more communication with people, you could very well say that there's a high probability the shootings wouldn't have taken place. If there's more dialogue and they knew the spattering amount of student leaders and non-student leaders to sit down and talk with the president, who was very mild -- a very wonderful thing about Bob White. He had a difficult time being a very visible point-person with all these things, relying heavily on his staff; and his staff had mixed emotions and different backgrounds. They had an "us versus them" mentality, and that's always ripe for disaster. Of course, most everyone felt they were on one side or the other, and there's no dialogue. It's hard to believe that could go on now with any continuation of some attempt of real dialogue, which would really mitigate potential problems.

[Interviewer]: John, thank you very much for taking the time out to talk with me.

[John Peach]: Pleasure. Okay.

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