How common is it for a college campus to have it’s own police force?
Do they have all the law enforcement powers the police have?
Is it a means to keep other law enforcement entities off of the campus unless they are called in?
re the recent Penn State controversey … apparently the campus police don’t garner much respect. Is that common?
In some places, campus police are a full police force (it seems the Penn ones were?). In others, like where I went to university, they are simply security guards. Partly it helps because the administration can then direct how and when rules are enforced. The local police may not want or care what the administration wants enforced; some rules are agreements with the university (like dorm behaviour rules) but not laws. Sometimes the regular police may be too busy to enforce what they see as trivial (i.e. noise complaints). Especially, many years ago colleges were like your parents and had curfews and lights-out policies.
When it comes to demonstrations on campus, the presence of real police was a touchy subject in the 60’s. They had no great interest in trying to negotiate a settlement to a confrontation, since whatever happened they did not have to deal with the consequences - the administration may have had to answer for actions that went beyond what they anticipated. The town police often resented the elitist universit administration and spoiled rich-kid students. To simplify matters, and since often the college was completely private property including its streets, the town police needed to be invited in unless it was urgent. Technically they could do anything they could do on any other property, practically, it was simpler to let the campus police deal with it.
The downside of campus forces is the same as any small-town ploice force - they can get too cozy. The leaders become buddies with the administration, and tend to permit favours, sweep stuff under the rug, and let things go when someone has influence or connections. The fact that the college administration controls jobs, promotions, etc. is also an issue. It’s possible to play fair and honest, but human nature often does not work like that.
I think at large schools it’s almost universally the case that campus police are real “sworn officers” now.
That’s generally how you can distinguish between mall-cop esque types and “real police.” If someone is a sworn law enforcement officer then they are a real police officer, regardless of what their primary jurisdiction is. They are going to be subject to certain state rules and in some cases Federal rules, and they have legal responsibilities that make them very different from subserviant security forces. For example if a sworn police officer sees a university President committing a crime, he can arrest him, it’s irrelevant if the officer is a sworn officer for the university police or the municipal police.
Same way a county sheriff deputy can arrest a county commissioner or a municipal officer can arrest the mayor.
Now just like anything, we live in the real world. Would campus police be prone to sweeping things under the rug if it found a university President doing something inappropriate? Sure, it’s possible. Same way a municipal officer might be inclined to “ignore” something the mayor is doing that is inappropriate.
Most transit police are real police officers too, and rail road police are as well.
Until recently the Library of Congress had its own police force, made up of sworn officers (I believe they merged them with the U.S. Capitol Police, in recent years.)
I think most malls are still mostly secured by “mall cops” who are just guys with a polyester uniform and a plastic badge, perhaps with pepper spray and a flash light.
The development of these forces is also largely financial, I would say.
A lot of the largest schools in a given state may actually not be located in the largest cities, just because of quirks in how things like land grand institutions have developed and etc. So you might have a situation where there is a town of 50,000 permanent residents that has a university with 35,000-40,000 students attending.
In such a town, if the regular municipal police was responsible for the campus you’d essentially have to make the taxes the permanent residents pay high enough to cover policing almost double their number. You can see how that would be problematic. For that reason if the university wants dedicated police presence (and most due, they like to tout campus safety to make parents at ease with sending their children to that school) they pretty much have to establish their own security force. In most cases it then makes sense to actually establish it as a real police force because in a community of 40,000 there are going to be real crimes that require real law enforcement officers attention, and just referring them to the municipal police can eventually put enough of a burden on them that you get unsatisfactory results.
Even in a city like Columbus or Austin which have nearly 1m residents, you have major universities with some 50k+ students, that’s still a large number of concentrated people that probably aren’t part of the tax base of the city. It would be difficult even for large cities to totally police those concentrated areas of young people without the university contributing financially.
I’ll answer this question at least. When I was at Penn State from 1989-92 and 1994 the campus cops were pretty much loathed. The main complaint was that they spent an awful lot of time chasing minor infractions which happened to draw a cash fine while ignoring serious crimes like theft and assault. In retrospect, focusing a little more on the latter might have helped a bit in the Sandusky case.
I also remember the Minority Students’ Association argued (and a lot of students agreed) that campus cops didn’t trust black students, and women’s groups thought they didn’t take crimes against women seriously. I should also note that during my dad’s time at Penn State there was an on-campus murder, and the campus cops totally bungled the crime scene. The case remains unsolved. But that $5 ticket for riding your bike on the sidewalk, they are all over that.
This. I was at University Park from 91-93, and the campus police office was where crimes embarrassing to the admin went to die. They were shit for sexual assaults or gaybashings, or really any kind of assault against students on-campus. Sweeping it under the rug kept official numbers from getting out and making the campus look unsafe, and thereby deterring attendance from Podunk, PA (which is MOST of PA).
At the university in town here, they are real police. I think they were at the other two universities at which my husband worked. I don’t know if they are well respected by the city police or not, but I’m pretty sure our small city police aren’t as well respected by the Chicago police, and I don’t know what the northern Illinois state police really think of southern Illinois state police. I imagine it’s a hierarchy just like in business.
Yes, this. I live in a university town with a year-round population of about 24-25,000. The university enrollment topped 20,000 this semester. Back in the early eighties, before the school mushroomed, there was a small campus security force of basically mall cops, and that worked just fine then. The local police were called in for real crimes. During the late eighties, the student population had expanded to the point that the campus developed an accredited police force of sworn peace officers with actual law enforcement powers, because there was no way for the town’s tax base to support a large enough department for what essentially was a second city.
The city department cooperates with the campus department in rare cases of major crimes, and can write you up for speeding on campus or that sort of thing, but they mostly leave the university police to handle the piddly stuff in that jurisdiction. (And the campus department is still viewed as slightly “second-class,” with most of its officers being fresh out of the academy or older cops looking for a quieter job as they slide toward retirement.)
Note that the Clery Act was specifically enacted to prevent crimes on or near college campuses from being “swept under the rug”. It was still pretty new in '91, though.
+1
However, I’ve also noticed that the ‘real’ police (city cops) seem to be going down the same path as years go by especially since the great recession hit. Call in with a complaint and the police can’t be bothered…but every day going to and from work I see at least one person pulled over getting a ticket.
I’ve even gone before the town committee (where the major is part of) and warned them that police are getting the reputation as tax collectors and not peace officers and that is dangerous because people will respect them less…but was just told that I was wrong. :rolleyes:
When I was in college we had campus police (who were real police officers by training)…and the joke on campus was that they were useless except to generate revenue for the University.
The University of Arizona has a real police force, and they suck. At least they did 20 years ago. I remember once, I was at a friend’s apartment near (but not ON) campus. We walked into the living room to find two UofA cops standing in the room. They had just come in, without knocking or anything. The reason they gave was that there had been an assault nearby* and the car parked outside matched the description of the car the suspects had driven away in. We told them to leave and they wouldn’t go. We ended up having to call the Tucson police to come get the UofA police out of the apartment.
*I later found out that by coincidence, the victim of the assault was an ex-boyfriend of mine. Who probably deserved it at the time.
The campus police at Iowa State are state police officers and have all powers of any police officer.
At the University of Manchester there’s a campus security force. They’re really nice and helpful, and it’s reassuring to see them walking around.
I think were meant to call the campus security before we call other emergency services, because (as I understand it) they respond to the same call, so the ambulance/fire brigade/police will come, but campus security will likely be there sooner because they are closer. They will also help the other vehicles come through & find their way etc. I’m not really sure exactly what law enforcement powers they have. They could probably pick you up and hand you over to the police, but I would think a lot of their work is telling naughty drunk kids to go home…
Once a few years ago, a guy followed me home, kept trying to touch me and tried to come in to my building (I told him to back off several times and ended up smacking him). I called campus security, and they literally said as soon as I was finished speaking: “does he have blond hair and a blue shirt?”. They had found him right away! I don’t know what they did about him, but they were very helpful to me. They even wanted me to get in touch with the uni counselling service (rather unnecessary, but very nice of them).
When there had been a few rapes in a particular part of town, I think the campus security negotiated a sort of deal with the taxi drivers, that they would drive home any girl even if they didn’t have any cash, and they would sort it out later. I heard from others that security would walk women around if they found them walking alone.
I’ve never heard anything bad about them at all. I don’t recall them making trouble for students during the riots we had here when the cuts were announced (though I’m not sure, I might just not remember). I personally get the impression that they are genuinely here for the security of the students 
These days at Penn State, the University Police force has been getting somewhat better since the days referred to by jayjay and Duke. In what I think is fairly typical, the University Police are split into a (smaller) force of actual sworn law enforcement officers who handle the larger crimes, and a (larger) force of auxiliary officers who handle patrols, ticketing, minor issues, dorm door proppings, and the like.
At least in 2002 they were pretty on the ball about sexual assault cases (I had to deal with a few of those investigations, owing to my sometimes position as bartender/bouncer for my fraternity) and at least some harassment/discrimination cases (my wife had good results when her very Jewish decorations were repeatedly defaced with neo-Nazi slogans at a branch campus). I also managed to NOT get busted for “paraphernalia” despite smoking (tobacco) in a seriously epic antique hookah in the gazebo outside my dorm at 2AM with some buddies, which I’m told by friends from other colleges is nothing short of a miracle. =P
I should also note that these days they cooperate closely with the various local law enforcement agencies (the State College Police and various township police departments) to the point of sharing livery and uniform standards.
I attended Penn State from 1997 to 2003 and still live in State College. It was my impression that the campus cops started shaping themselves up following the Jillian Roberts shootings in '96.
I’m very glad to hear all of that. Thank you.
When I was a student at Kennesaw State University outside of Atlanta (2006-2007ish) there were at least two murders of young women. I think they found one of them in the trunk of a burned out car, but I could be misremembering. I remember feeling quite on edge when I had to be on campus at night. I don’t know if they ever caught the people responsible or not. Anyone know?
Do they call it a police department, though?
I have a friend who is a police officer on the Stanford University police force. He is a regular police officer who went through the same training any other policeman might have had, and he has full law enforcement powers.
I worked for Hamline University in St.Paul a couple of years ago. We were basically Security, meaning we spent 99% of our time locking and unlocking doors and buildings, responding to alarms and calls, driving around parking lots, running a late night pickup/drop off van service and basically just walking around.
About the time I left, they were planning to transition to a “more professional” armed (pepper spray, batons) ‘force’, basically at the instigation of the retired Minneapolis cops who ran the operation and were not content to supervisor mere Security Guards who they obviously felt were beneath them.
For anything major, we called the St. Paul Police, a few officers of which were payed obscene rates (read: their normal OT rates) to just hang around and socialize with the retired cop management people a few nights a week.
Like any other Security operation I worked for (Loomis, Securitas, a couple of minor places), we had the usual mix of;
It’s the 1’s and 2’s you need to worry about in dealing with any Security department. It’s the 4’s and 5’s doing the actual work.