Eight-year veteran promoted to lead NVCC Public Safety Department

WATERBURY (Aug. 9, 2006) — An eight-year veteran of the Public Safety Department at Naugatuck Valley Community College has been promoted to lead the department.

Lt. Toni Rinaldi has been named director of public safety at NVCC, overseeing a staff of 11 people and all police activities on campus.

Toni Rinaldi, who held the position of acting director of public safety for several months and had been a sergeant, has been promoted to a lieutenant and hired into the director’s position permanently. The former director, Edward Connole, retired in January after 12 years as director of public safety.

“I’m honored to have been chosen for this position and feel privileged to lead a team of such high-caliber professionals,” Rinaldi said.

As director of public safety, Rinaldi oversees a staff of 11 people and supervises all police activities on the 110-acre NVCC campus. In Connecticut, campus police officers receive the same testing, training and certification as municipal police officers.

Rinaldi is former president of the Connecticut Association of Women Police (CAWP) and is currently vice president of the Connecticut Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. She has been selected as Officer of the Year twice — by CAWP in 2003 and by the International Association of Women Police in 2004.

“The college is extremely fortunate to have someone with Lt. Rinaldi’s extensive law enforcement background head up the Public Safety Department,” said James Troup, NVCC’s dean of administration. “She has already exhibited superior leadership skills, as well as an understanding of how law enforcement should function in a higher education setting.”

Rinaldi joined the NVCC Public Safety Department in 1998. She began her career in law enforcement as a part-time officer in Woodbury, before becoming an airport police officer at Bradley International Airport for six years, assigned to Connecticut State Police Troop W.

She is one of 32 incident command system instructors nationally for the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. Rinaldi also is certified in critical incident management, and hate and bias crime training, providing training to municipal and agency officers in those areas.

She was valedictorian in her class at the Connecticut Police Academy in 1992, and received a master’s degree in health education from Southern Connecticut State University, a bachelor’s degree in physical education from the University of Bridgeport.