Question of the Week:

[asterroc]

Should college police officers carry guns?

Discuss.

Comments

[l0stmyrel1g10n.livejournal.com]

yes. college students seem, as a demographic, more likely to be victims of crimes because they are easier targets. the police officers are more likely to need the guns.

[framefolly.livejournal.com]

No. I don't have a good spelled out reason, but that's my gut response. I am open to being persuaded, though.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

A few questions, if you don't mind.

* When you say "victims of crimes" do you mean violent or non-violent crimes, or both?
* Do you think the perpetrators are members of the college community, or outsiders?
* Do you see arming the campus police as changing the perception of the campus leading to fewer crimes committed in the first place, or do you envision the police actively intervening in the crimes (either more frequently or more effectively)?

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

It's my gut response too, and like you it's not well-reasoned. Hence my posting this question. I want to see the arguments for and against and come to a more informed decision. It's being debated on my campus, and I have abstained from voicing my opinion as of yet since I don't have a reason for it. Unfortunately I haven't been able to make the events where people are discussing it, so I haven't learned much about the arguments through my campus.

[q10.livejournal.com]

i don't know, but they should most certainly be able to relatively quickly get access to guns in the event of an emergency.

[fireaphid.livejournal.com]

I'm on a campus with a relatively high security officer to student ratio as well as a moderate amount of crime (armed muggings, bicycle theft, drunken violence, etc.), and based on observing security officers both helping and worsening problems, I think it can be justified both ways. In my opinion, campuses with significant crime problems should have some fraction (not all, not none) of their security force trained in the use of guns, but it shouldn't be standard. Basically, if something especially bad were going on, someone would call in for guns, so they wouldn't just be carried around all the time. I'm not totally sure about this, but I believe this is what my school does.

[l0stmyrel1g10n.livejournal.com]

-both. college students are fairly likely, in my experience, to leave their doors unlocked and have their stuff stolen. college-age females are also fairly likely targets for sexual assault.
-again, both. sometimes students get in fights, do stupid shit, steal each other's stuff...but there are also other members of the community who see an opportunity to take advantage of the students' follies.
-more of the latter, i suppose, but a bit of both. if you're committing a crime and you see an armed officer coming toward you, you're more likely to run away than if you saw an unarmed rentacop.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Campus police who do not have guns typically rely on armed local police when guns are required. According to the US Justice Dept, the median response time for violent crimes is in the 6-10 minutes range (26.6% within 5 minutes, 32% for 6-10 minutes, 29.7% for 11 minutes to 1 hour).

The other option to relying upon local armed forces would be to secure arms on the college premises in some manner. I have no data about how long it would take to procure secured arms - the campus police would have to travel to the site of the arms (either the individuals who were at the site of the incident, or their backup who were elsewhere on campus), unsecuring the arms, and then traveling to the site of the incident with the arms.

I wonder how much greater the cost overhead would be for securing arms than having the campus police carry arms. Presumably the training would be the same for the police, and I'm under the impression that campus police generally do not take their weapons home when off-duty so they would have to be stored on-site anyway, so perhaps there wouldn't be significantly greater overhead.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

FWIW I'm at a state school, so for us they're police, not security officers - they have all the same legal powers as local police or state troopers.

Two questions.

* What do you see as being the difference between having some of the police force armed, and having the unarmed police force call for the local police who would be armed?
* On a limited budget, would you rather see money go towards (a) arming police and training them in the use of the guns, (b) better training the police to work within their current limits, or (c) hiring more police officers with the same level of training as the current police officers? I think in general I'd prefer (b) at this point in time (I am not convinced guns are necessary and would rather err towards not having them), but on my campus in specific I feel we could use a stronger police presence overall so I'd probably say split between (b) and (c).

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

if you're committing a crime and you see an armed officer coming toward you, you're more likely to run away than if you saw an unarmed rentacop.

And that begs the question of whether the criminal can clearly tell the difference - and even how much of a difference there is in the first place. As I am at a state school, they are police officers with all the power of local police officers or state troopers, such as the power to make arrests. They are lacking the gun but most of them carry mace and I think I've seen billy clubs or something similar on our officers. Their uniforms are indistinguishable from local police officers. IMO they do not look any less intimidating or official than local police officers.

(Except the poor newbie officer who gets stuck on crossing-guard duty every the morning. The newest officer always seems to get that job, and s/he looks like quite the sap wearing that reflective vest.)

[fireaphid.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, that indeed makes it different!

- I think it's about proximity. If something bad enough to need a gun is going on, if the non-campus cops are much farther away, it would be beneficial to have the campus police have someone with a gun on hand. Again, that's only if there's more violent crime there than in the general population around the area, enough to merit guns on campus.

- My campus has plenty of security officers (practically the only department not cut due to the recession), so it's hard to imagine hiring more being effective, just because I don't know the ratio where you are. Similarly, I don't know how well-trained the police are there to begin with; again, where I am, they're all trained in basic emergency stuff, and some of them are more advanced (EMTs, special fire degrees, guns, etc.), and when there's an emergency, the right people always seem to show up. If there's a lot more room to improve training and hiring, then I agree that they shouldn't be thinking about guns unless there's a major problem with violent crime there.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

* I think response time is also an issue, as I mentioned in my reply to q10 above. I expect that having some armed would be a faster response time than either having to call local police or having a store room or something for the weapons.

* Now that I think about it, I expect that our campus officers are already highly trained since they're police, so I wonder how much good extra training would even do.

And two more thoughts.

* What do you think about non-lethal weapons such as tasers?

* It's my understanding that the push to arm our campus police is out of fear of a school shooter - a particular category of violent crime. While the incidence of such an event at one particular college in a given year is negligibly small, the possible consequences are devastating.

[l0stmyrel1g10n.livejournal.com]

ah. at my school, the security officers look nothing like RPD officers. their trucks also look nothing like patrol cars. it's pretty easy to tell the difference, and the security officers are not very intimidating.

[fireaphid.livejournal.com]

- I was under the impression that to use a taser, one must be particularly close to the tase-ee, and the benefit of a gun is that one can shoot from a distance without endangering oneself. I think tasers are easily replaceable by special training in disarming someone, whereas guns are not.

- I really think that preparing every campus for a school shooting is ridiculous. Whoever is proposing that must not see that having guns on campus is inherently more likely to hurt someone than the remote possibility of a school shooting; I can imagine that if every cop on campus had a gun, it would be likely that they'd shoot someone because they mistakenly thought they were dangerous. (I recall an incident in New York when a cop shot a man as he took a candy bar out of his pocket because the cop thought it was a gun.)

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

According to Wikipedia, the maximum range of a taser is 35ft. This is less than a handgun AFAIK, but a taser is still a ranged weapon, not melee.

[allandaros.livejournal.com]

Yes.

I am currently attending a big state school, not dissimilar to Virginia Tech, I would presume. It is a very big campus, very difficult to secure, and in the case of some event requiring cops-with-guns, I would really rather that they were available right there, rather than having to wait for them to arrive.

Essentially, I would rather that firearms be available and not be needed, than the reverse.

[allandaros.livejournal.com]

I would be happy to see tasers as an adjunct to firearms, but not as a replacement. As you've noted, they're short-range. From my understanding, they're single-shot. This combination does NOT make for an effective weapon. Even at 35', in a dangerous situation, I would not be surprised if the cop missed with one shot. Firefights are rough! And if a taser's all you have...well, you're up the creek without a paddle after that one shot.

Are there certainly more situations where a taser would be useful? Sure, and that's why I don't mind seeing them as a support. But they are in no way a replacement for a firearm.

[datan0de.livejournal.com]

I think that they should not, though I have an exceedingly personal, non-analytical reason for this stance. I've almost been shot (and, presumably, killed) by a campus security cop.

It was about 20 years ago at the University of South Florida. A friend of ours was a student in the College of Engineering, and knew that the engineering building was open 24 hours. It was an ideal place to play Laser Tag at night, and we'd done so a few times without incident. Our procedure was to go through the building and give anyone there (there was usually a prof or two working late) a heads-up that we were there and let them know what we were doing. We never had any issues or complaints.

We'd been played for a few hours, and at one point I was sitting on the floor of a hallway, taking apart my malfunctioning laser tag gun to try to get it working again. One of my friends was standing near me. I was engrossed in what I was doing until I heard someone yell "Freeze!" I looked up and two cops were standing there with guns pointed at us. The one pointing her gun at me was clearly terrified and visibly shaking while pointing a loaded gun at me.

They shook us up a bit (they didn't beat us or anything like that, but their physical handling of us clearly fit well within the legal definition of battery), rounded us all up (including femetal, who had tagged along but spent the evening quietly reading a book) and gave those of us who weren't students at the time trespassing warnings.

They later said that someone had called and claimed that "terrorists were doing maneuvers in the building." (I shudder to think what would've happened if this had taken place post-9/11.) They also accused us of vandalism, which was a blatant fabrication.

Needless to say we never went back. I take no issue with them kicking us out or issuing trespassing warnings. I can even overlook the absurdity of mistaking our Laser Tag equipment for anything even vaguely realistic (at close range and under excellent lighting conditions). However, the cop that drew down on me was clearly panicing, and represented the only genuine threat to anybody there. In my clearly biased opinion, anyone not sufficiently in control of their faculties to hold a loaded firearm steadily while pointing it at my head either shouldn't have a firearm in that scenario or should not have been there at all.

Just my $.02.