There are a couple of colleges I’ve heard about the have sworn officers who are not armed. Unless something has changed UW Oshkosh was doing that here in Wisconsin. That sounds insane to me and it was obviously a policy written by someone who knows nothing about law enforcement. Loach, can you imagine being a cop with a firearm taken out of the force continuum equation? Because I can’t.
If it’s the way you and your cite have presented it, THAT’S OUTRAGEOUS!
I’m surprised it has withstood legal challenge (if any). Especially with the Cleary Act in force.
It is common for private entities to have a police department with law enforcement authority. The Union Pacific Railroad, for instance, is a private company with a police force that is authorized in nearly every state the railroad operates. It follows then that private college could have its own police as well.
You do know this is in GQ, where factual answers are encouraged?
I worked for my university as a security guard under the jurisdiction of the campus police who were sworn officers with the same power as any other police officer. When they arrested people, and they did, they would take them down to the county jail. I helped out on occasion.
As a security guard, I didn’t get any special training, but the campus police when through the same training that other agencies required. This was in Utah, other states have different requirements.
No, it stops before that last piece, thus ending the continuity to completion.
I couldn’t imagine trying to effect a felony arrest of a subject that is or may be armed while I am not. Those officers that are sworn but unarmed, I wonder if their academy training is different.
No I can’t. I knew one guy in my old Guard unit that was a cop there. He couldn’t wait to get out and work somewhere else (which is not that easy in this state). Lost track and I don’t know if he did.
The State of Illinois has the Private College Campus Police Act that basically gives the board of any private college or university the right to establish a police force. “Members of the campus police department shall have the powers of municipal peace officers and county sheriffs, including the power to make arrests…”
Most colleges just have a few officers who patrol the campus and maybe the adjacent streets, but the University of Chicago (a private institution) has taken their police powers to the extreme. They patrol a seven square mile area around the university (from 37th to 65th Streets and from Cottage Grove to Lake Shore Drive). They provide a supplementary police force to the neighborhoods surrounding the university. There are police call boxes on the major streets, anyone in the service area can call the university police for assistance. Looking at their crime blotter, it appears that a lot of their calls are for off-campus burglaries and assaults and people being arrested on outstanding warrants during traffic stops. University police take a 16 week training course at the Chicago Police Academy followed by 12 weeks of departmental training. The must meet all state testing and proficiency standards.
Their jurisdiction overlaps that of the Chicago Police Department. If you call 911 from an off-campus phone, you still get connected to the Chicago police.
A bit of background: The U of C is located in what is now a very safe neighborhood surrounded by slums on three sides and a lake on the fourth side. The area wasn’t always so safe. In the 1950s the university got involved in urban renewal (gentrification) projects to clean up the surrounding areas (and, some would say, to obtain cheap land). They started with a few officers who would investigate illegal enterprises and turn them over to the city police, but when a faculty member’s wife was assaulted on a street near campus, they greatly expanded their force and their duties. They seem to expand their patrol area every few years.
There was a recent kerfuffle when one of their plain clothes detectives infiltrated a community group that was protesting policies at the university hospitals. The university administration claimed that this was a rogue operation.
Some years ago they had plans to build a lockup. I can’t find whether they actually did it.
In 82 they had state police on horseback guard the goalpost at Ohio Stadium after the win against Michigan to keep the OSU students from tearing it down in a drunken victory riot. My roommate later that night organized a drunken mob on High Street to go back and take it down after the cops had gone to other duties. He later went on to become a dean at a collge in San Francisco; natural born leader he was.
On a related note, when I was at Texas A&M, I heard that Texas Tech has a quick-release pin at the base of their goal posts, so the students could take them down in their traditional victory mob without actually damaging anything (unless they dropped the goal post on someone, presumably). In any case, the Corps of Cadets would post a guard around the goal posts at the end of the game.
