Upland’s new police chief Marshal Richard Craig started working in Upland last month. He’s not like other police officers. Unlike other police officers, he’s famous: Craig has almost 160,000 followers on TikTok.
That TikTok account kickstarted a chain of events that ultimately led him to Upland.
Craig began posting on social media in 2020, while working as a School Resource Officer for the Avon school system, a suburb east of Indianapolis. He noticed social media was a large part of his students’ lives.
“You know, we're on these platforms, TikTok, Instagram, whatnot, and if you, in the modern day, if you want to get to know young people, you've got to meet them where they are,” he said.
At first, Craig used TikTok simply to understand youth trends and more effectively work with students at Avon. In 2020, however, the George Floyd protests led him to start posting.
The protests, Craig felt, spread a lot of misconceptions about law enforcement, leading him to go live. He started “Let’s Iron It Out,” a series where viewers could ask him law enforcement questions, and he would answer them while ironing his uniform each night.
“You want people to have a better understanding of what you're doing, just in law enforcement overall, especially if you're taking away someone's civil rights or civil liberties,” he said. “You want someone to understand the why.”
Virality struck Craig a little later when his post responding to the “Devious Lick” trend became popular. The trend, in which students filmed themselves stealing or destroying soap dispensers, teacher’s personal items and school property, had significantly damaged Avon schools.
Craig’s video, in which he imitates the trend at the start before panning to a mirror to admonish trend participants, gained millions of views.
As a result, Craig was named the National Association of School Resource Officers’s Officer of the Year for Region Five in, an area including much of the Southern Midwest, in 2022.
Craig’s greatest moment of fame, however, came after the Uvalde school shooting in May 2022 — an event infamous for police officers waiting outside the school building while the shooting occurred. CNN, looking for a voice from the law enforcement community, reached out to him requesting an interview. Though initially suspicious, Craig agreed, being told that he would be interviewed by the host from the studio.
“15 or 20 minutes before the interview starts, my phone rings, and it’s the producer, the executive producer that I talked to the night before,” Craig said. “And he goes, ‘Well, it was supposed to be some lady that was supposed to interview you live from the studio. But Boris Sanchez is going to interview you now, from the ground in Uvalde.’ I went ‘Oh, that’s a whole different ball game.’”
The interview went well, he said. He explained what he would have done in the situation and pushed back against what he saw as mistaken criticisms of police officers in schools.
CNN invited him back multiple times when they needed a school resource officer’s perspective.
Craig received more attention in the winter of 2025, when he met a pizza delivery boy who walked half a mile through a snowstorm to deliver a pizza — only to receive a two dollar tip on a $40 order.
Craig, after giving the worker all the money in his wallet, started a fundraiser to adequately tip him. With a goal of $500, the fundraiser ultimately raised over $50,000.
“And that’s what I always end every one of my lives with: we all can do better, we all can be better, do better, be better, because we can,” Craig said. “You know, and I'd always tell people: you never know how much you can change the trajectory of someone's day, or even their entire life, by a small random act of kindness. And, boy, like I've said that for years, and then this happened.”
This growing fame brought Craig into conflict back at Avon. After his commanding officer left, the school brought in a new chief from a nearby district, who, Craig said, was jealous of the media attention Avon received.
The new chief instantly began restricting Craig’s social media presence and media appearances. One day, when Craig requested leave to deal with a family emergency, despite the approval of the school’s HR department, the chief fired Craig — an illegal act, according to the Department of Labor.
Avon Community Schools Corporation refused to respond to a request for comment, stating they do not discuss personnel issues.
When searching for new jobs, Craig intended to stay within a large city. Then, Upland caught his eye.
“In Upland, the community, the trajectory they're on, what they have, the sky's really the limit,” he said. “With Taylor, NearSpace Launch, you know, and everything they've done, our proximity to I-69, like there's all of these massive, massive things that are great for future growth.”
Craig seeks to make changes to the police department, increasing engagement with the town of Upland. He envisions having specific days where he hangs out in the library answering questions and reading to children, sponsoring various events and generally taking a leadership role in the community.
Currently, he’s working on small changes — setting up a desk, computer and phone for his office, updating procedures and protocols and redesigning Upland’s shoulder patch to give the police department its own distinct identity.
“My goal for this police department here in Upland is for it to be a community-based police department first and foremost,” he said.
Taylor students are fully a part of that community, Craig said. Upland doubles in population when university is in session; the average age of the town is 21. Such an important part of Upland cannot be ignored, he said.
An avid sports fan, Craig has already bought Taylor merch and looks forward to attending Taylor Athletics games — especially Silent Night.
“I’m all in,” he said. “I want to be a direct reflection of you all, because you guys have a voice, just as much as the person who’s grown up here their entire life, for 65 years … I want to be an advocate, to marry the student body to this community and, you know, I’m looking for things that will bring Taylor students into the community than to have you guys isolated just right here.”
