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Thursday, April 19, 2007
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College Police Departments Have Become More Professional, Experts Say
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It is too early to tell how effectively the Virginia Tech Police Department reacted to Monday's events, but the worst mass shooting in United States history is shining a new light on the role of university police departments.
Their officers have been caricatured as little more than glorified security guards, but for many years now, the police officers on some college campuses have had the same level of training as officers from the local municipality or sheriff's office, said Jeffrey S. Jacobson, a New York lawyer whose specialty is advising college police departments on jurisdictional issues.
Until the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s, most officers on college campuses were security guards, Mr. Jacobson said. Police departments began forming on campuses because of local officers' reluctance to put down such insurrections.
The professionalization of campus departments accelerated, he said, in the early 1990s, in light of a proliferation of sensational crimes on college campuses, and the passage of a federal law in 1990 that required colleges to collect and make available statistics on crimes occurring on their campuses (The Chronicle, March 21, 1990).
A number of states, including Virginia, now require campus police officers to have the same level of training as all other police officers. And police forces at some colleges have become sizable. Virginia Tech's has 39 full-time officers, according to its Web site.
However, a number of watchdog groups point out that campus police officers are rarely involved in investigating capital crimes, and their inexperience sometimes shows. Police officers at Eastern Michigan University are being questioned by the U.S. Education Department about statements the officers issued saying they didn't suspect foul play in the death of an undergraduate shortly after her body was found in her dormitory room in December. A fellow student was later arrested for rape and murder in the case (The Chronicle, March 23).
After an undergraduate at Western Kentucky University was raped and set on fire in her dorm room in May 2003, the campus police did not secure the crime scene for more than three hours. At trial, it emerged that the lead detective on the case had never investigated a murder or violent felony in his 14 years on the university's police force.
Campus police officers are typically paid less than their counterparts on state or local forces, according to some surveys taken in the 1990s. Pay for all campus police chiefs rose about 54 percent between 1995 and 2006, according to data compiled by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. But that barely outpaces inflation.
"It wouldn't shock me if campus-police pay is lower than other officers, in take-home pay," said Mr. Jacobson. "But they have other benefits -- they can take courses and pursue degrees -- that even out the discrepancies."
On larger campuses, many officers carry weapons, but it varies widely from state to state. In Pennsylvania, a state law was passed last year that requires officers at the 14 state universities to carry weapons. Previously, the presidents at each of the universities decided whether their officers would carry weapons. At the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and Northern Iowa University, policy dictates that police officers do not carry weapons in almost all cases, although the Associated Press reports that the policy is being re-evaluated in light of the Virginia Tech shootings.
Laws on campus-police jurisdiction also vary widely. In Virginia, for example, jurisdiction ends at the edge of campus. In Texas, jurisdiction includes the entire county where an institution is located. In New Jersey, jurisdiction is the entire state.
In general, those who deal frequently with campus officers report an increasingly respectful relationship.
"I believe we see a higher level of professionalism than we had 10 or 15 years ago," said Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, in Arlington, Va. He said he helped a number of college newspapers sue campus police departments successfully in the early 1990s for access to crime reports.
"In isolated circumstances, we find that they want to be treated as a professional police force, but they don't want to take on the responsibility of opening records, as other police departments must," said Mr. Goodman.
He pointed out that in times of stress, police officers from any level of law enforcement can misjudge situations. A photographer for The Collegiate Times, the student newspaper at Virginia Tech, had his camera, his camera bag, and his photo identification taken from him in the early hours after Monday's shootings. An officer of the Virginia State Police apparently thought the photographer, Shaozhuo Cui, matched the profile of the gunman, who has since been identified as Cho Seung-Hui. Both are of Asian descent.
Background articles from The Chronicle:
- After Deadly Massacre at Virginia Tech, Students Question University's Response (4/17/2007)
- Colleges' Safety and Risk-Management Experts Begin Looking for Lessons in Virginia Tech Shootings (4/17/2007)
- Grief Counseling, Campus Security, and Risk Management: From The Chronicle's Archives (4/18/2007)
- A University Is Accused of Hushing Up a Murder (3/23/2007)
- Concern Over Campus Safety Moves Into the National Arena as House Weighs Bill Requiring Colleges to Report Crime (3/21/1990)