Front and Center: Shanice Mays
Published on Tuesday, September 2, 2025
By: Danny Barrett Jr., dlbarrett@umc.edu
Photos By: Jay Ferchaud/ UMMC Communications
Have talent, will travel.
It’s what UMMC Police and Public Safety Department Sgt. Shanice Mays would have on a job search profile if she were available. These days, though, the UMMC Police is the happy recipient of Mays’ versatility.
Mays, 36, entered her 11th year at the Medical Center in 2025 and second as sergeant leading the department’s night shift crew. It’s a unit of officers largely responsible for responding to calls to areas most active in the late hours of night and wee hours of the morning.
“We do crowd control at the ER when things are busy,” Mays said. “My unit deals with a lot of emotional family members and patients. Many times, we have people here because loved ones are sick and have more going on than they can deal with.”
Mays draws on her life experiences working as part of a team and in health care as a way to communicate with nursing staff and help create teachable moments with her fellow officers. A Puckett native, Mays starred on her high school basketball team and played two seasons at the University of Southern Mississippi. She then attended nursing school at Hinds Community College for a year and worked in the adult hospital as a patient care tech before switching to law enforcement.
“I can quickly identify someone who might be having cognitive issues or slurred speech,” she said. “I can ask the nurse whether it’s normal, or whether they’re just scared or acting out.”
As an officer, she served on the department’s Behavioral Response Team, a unit that responded to panic alarms and disruptive patient emergencies, also known as code white. It was designed to reduce the number of workplace violence incidents and injuries to anyone on the Medical Center campus.
“There’s often an underlying reason why a person is disruptive,” she said. “It is good when we can go in with a certain approach and slowly peel back the layers of the onion with someone being disruptive.”
Nursing staff in the Emergency Department see Sgt. Mays and others in her unit almost as shift partners whenever the need for police presence arises.
“Sgt. Mays’ is an invaluable presence at our hospital – especially in our ER,” said Jordan Veal, a charge nurse in the ED. “Sgt. Mays communication skills are exceptional – she listens actively, de-escalates tense encounters and bridges the gap between law enforcement and health care with professionalism and grace.”
Her efforts have netted her a 10-year service pin and a People’s Choice Award in 2024 for Best Internal Customer Service.
“Sgt. Mays has just about done it all at UMMC, including being a tech, serving as a police officer, stepping up as a BRT officer and now in her current role as sergeant,” said interim UMMC Police Chief Nick Kehoe. “Her journey shows not only her dedication but also her versatility. If there’s a challenge on campus, chances are she has already been there, done that and is ready for the next one.”
For Mays, those steps begin each evening and, ideally, ends as safely as it starts.
“The ultimate goal each night is every officer goes home the same way they came to work,” she said.