Patrick Maguire is on a quest. With his wife, son and daughter, UM-Dearborn’s new chief of police and director of public safety has hauled a camper to all but eight of the contiguous United States. As much as he likes an adventure, though, he’s always called Michigan home.
Maguire, who stepped into his new role in September following two months as interim chief and five as deputy, traces his decision to become a police officer to the early example set for him by his parents, in particular his mother. In addition to working as a public school teacher, she was always closely engaged in the family’s local Ann Arbor community, serving on the board of Habitat for Humanity and helping at a soup kitchen run by the Ann Arbor Hunger Coalition.
“We’d volunteer once a month to serve meals on Friday nights to the unhoused,” Maguire says. “It reinforced in me that part of being an adult is being a part of your community, and being a part of a community is finding opportunities to help.”
Maguire’s parents also instilled in him a strong work ethic. During high school, he had jobs at the Ann Arbor Municipal Airport and the train-station-turned-restaurant Gandy Dancer. For a time, he thought he wanted to become a pilot — that was, until one of his instructors at the local flying club warned him there were no jobs and no money in the profession.
He enrolled at Michigan State University with the vague idea he’d go into law enforcement. Shortly before graduating with a degree in criminal justice and police science, he attended a career fair where representatives from the FBI, Secret Service and Drug Enforcement Administration were staffing booths.
“They’d all give you their spiel and their glossy handouts,” he says. “And then they’d tell you that they were on a federal hiring freeze and weren’t hiring for three to four years.”
His college counselor advised him to look into a federally funded, community-oriented police academy up at Ferris State University. Just one week after graduating in May 2000, he signed up.
On completing five months of boot camp-style training all over the state, Maguire joined the Ann Arbor Police Department, excited by the prospect of being re-immersed in the vibrant atmosphere of the college town where he’d grown up.
“I’ve just always liked the climate of campus life and college towns,” he says. “There’s always something going on. It’s not like New York City or Vegas, but there’s always something to do. Something’s open 24 hours.”
Of the 25 years he went on to serve in the AAPD, some of the most memorable, he says, were the 10 he spent as a K-9 officer. “A dog’s the best partner you can have,” he insists. “You usually get along pretty well.” Usually, but not always — after his second dog was medically retired, he got a third, but things didn’t work out when that one bit him on the arm.
He still has a canine companion at home today, an adopted German shepherd-Labrador mix named Tank, but Tank has fewer responsibilities.“His only job is just to lie around and take me for a walk once or twice a day,” Maguire says.
Maguire worked his way up the ranks with the AAPD, from officer to sergeant to lieutenant and, finally, to deputy chief. He was about ready for something new when, as fate would have it, an opening at UM-Dearborn popped up on his LinkedIn feed.
He calls it an “aha” moment. The university hadn’t been on his radar, but it seemed like a great fit: he was looking for a change of scenery from Ann Arbor, yet still had a soft spot for the campus atmosphere. He’d visited the campus a handful of times in the past and had heard good things from his niece, an alum.
He was hired as deputy chief and started in February 2026. When, five months later, then-Chief Paul Tennies took a position elsewhere, Maguire stepped in, initially on an interim basis.
His experience so far has exceeded expectations, he says, and he’s been struck by the familial feel of the campus. “I’ve really been shocked at how tight-knit it is, and how very welcoming everyone’s been,” he says.
He appreciates how few layers of bureaucracy there are at the university: “As I was being introduced to people or trying to problem-solve, it felt like everywhere I went, I was dealing with the person in charge,” he says.
A campus defined by its supportive community, Maguire recognizes, is best served by a corresponding approach to safety and security. Many of the calls his team receives are from people looking for advice or help rather than to report a crime.
“I’ve read recent reports of officers helping someone change a battery or a tire after their car broke down,” he says. “The other day we had an officer give some prospective students what was basically a personal tour.” The students were on campus on a Sunday hoping to see the building where they’d be taking their classes, but it was closed. “The officer escorted them inside so they could take a peek,” Maguire says, emphasizing that the building in question was secure.
The university has had a few police chiefs in recent years, each of whom, Maguire says, has brought growth to the department. “One of my goals is to bring some stability,” he says. “I want to stay here for a number of years.”
“Beyond that, we want to continue enhancing our safety service and support,” he adds. “One of the things that that entails for us right now is growing the department a little bit.” In addition to patrolling the U-M Marygrove campus, his team has been assigned responsibility for public safety at the University of Michigan Center for Innovation in downtown Detroit, which is due to open in fall 2027. That’s on top of providing backup when needed in Ann Arbor, including on football Saturdays.
Outside work, Maguire is looking forward to taking his camper to those states that have so far eluded him: Alabama, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington. None of those trips are on the calendar just yet, though. For now, Maguire says, he wants to focus on the new role and getting to know even more people on campus.
Story by Alex de Wild. Photos by Michigan Photography. Archival photo courtesy of Patrick Maguire.
