Four days after a campus police officer shot and killed a 43-year-old man during an off-campus traffic stop, Santa J. Ono, the University of Cincinnati’s president, announced an overhaul of the university’s police department.
The changes made on Thursday — which may be temporary, depending on the outcome of meetings with city leaders — include a directive that the university’s police officers conduct traffic stops only within campus boundaries.
That limitation illustrates how blurred the lines between the campus police and their broader communities can be: What should campus officers be able to do on off-campus patrols? And where should they be able to go?
We took a look at those questions, and others, regarding the complicated role of a modern campus police force.
Following the incident, the University of Cincinnati’s police force will focus its patrols on the campus. How common is it for a campus police force to patrol other areas?
Very common. About 86 percent of all four-year colleges, public and private, allow their campus police forces to patrol property adjacent to the campus, according to a Department of Justice report released this year, using 2011-12 data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. More than one-third of four-year public and private institutions let their campus police departments patrol statewide, the report said.
It is often more efficient to let a college police force patrol areas off the campus where students or staff members may live than to leave those areas to the city police, says S. Daniel Carter, director of the 32 Campus Safety Initiative for the VTV Family Outreach Foundation, established in the aftermath of the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech.
“Many colleges and universities have an interest in protecting that broader campus community,” he says. “Local agencies frequently can’t provide as much coverage as a campus department can.”
Where are campus forces allowed to go?
That depends on the institution and, very likely, the relationship between its police force and the city or state police. Seventy percent of institutional police forces, according to the federal report, have agreements with local law-enforcement agencies that define their roles and territories. Those boundaries are meant to keep campus officers patrolling safely and efficiently, says Mark Wynn, a former city police officer in Nashville and now a consultant who runs training programs for police departments.
Mr. Wynn says campus police officers are also assigned specific “areas of responsibility,” like an intersection or residence hall, so that campus supervisors and dispatchers know where to find them in an emergency, and to ensure campus coverage. If an officer leaves an assigned post, that officer may later have to explain to higher-ups, Mr. Wynn says.
“If I’m on First Street and I look on Second Street and I see somebody mugging a citizen, well, that makes sense to assist that citizen,” he says. “You wouldn’t walk away.”
But veering further from an area of responsibility can create problems. “As the chief, I’d want to know, Why are you making traffic stops on the other side of town when you should be protecting students?” Mr. Wynn says “You have to be grounded in common sense.”
What types of off-campus incidents would a campus police force deal with?
It’s quite common for campus police officers to make traffic stops, experts say. The intention matches the thinking behind off-campus patrols: Many students work and live off the campus, so by keeping those areas safe, campus police officers are protecting their own institutions as well.
“We often conduct traffic stops on vehicles that we are unaware are not affiliated with our campus,” says David L. Perry, vice president for safety and chief of police at Florida State University. “I don’t think it would be alarming if a campus police officer were to stop a person for a traffic violation and subsequently find out that they are wanted for terrorism or other heinous crimes.”
Just like city officers, campus police officers may have to handle situations ranging from robberies to rapes or shootings, says Mr. Wynn. At colleges that let their police forces patrol off the campus, the campus police can often be first responders to dangerous off-campus situations.
“If I’m in trouble, come running,” Mr. Wynn says, recalling times as a police officer in Nashville when he would be backed up by officers from Vanderbilt University. “It doesn’t matter about the boundary lines; you just come as quickly as you can.”
But is a campus police officer a “real police officer”?
Yes. “They are absolutely real police,” says Mr. Carter, the campus-safety advocate. “I still think campus police are even misunderstood by their campus community members.”
College police officers go through the same level of training as the city police do, he says. Even if they work for departments that are not nationally accredited by an outside agency, campus police officers must graduate from a police academy and continue training throughout their careers.
Campus police officers also have to understand the students and communities they’re protecting, which takes an added level of sophistication, says Gary J. Margolis, a founder of Margolis Healy & Associates, a campus-security consulting firm in Burlington, Vt. “In terms of scope and size,” a campus “may look like a city, but in terms of the culture and the mission and organization, it’s not,” he says. “Not every officer I knew who came from the town might have done well in a university setting.”
The University of Cincinnati arms its officers. Why would a campus force need guns?
Cincinnati is hardly the only institution to arm its force. About 75 percent of officers at four-year institutions were allowed to carry arms in 2011-12, the Justice Department reported.
That’s an increase of nearly 10 percentage points from 2004-5, and the trend is likely to continue. Colleges are “leaning more favorably” toward arming their officers, Mr. Perry says, “to quickly address the many dangers that we see faced.”
About 40 percent of sworn officers also carry stun guns, according to the data. Nearly all carry pepper spray and batons. Both campus and city officers also get frequent training in a tactic called “verbal judo,” which teaches them to ease tension in a situation that could otherwise get violent.
“Yelling and screaming doesn’t work,” Mr. Wynn says. “When you become part of the problem, you take yourself out of the solution.”
How well do city and campus police forces work together?
It probably depends on the day, and on whom you ask. When a city force and a university force work in tandem, they can properly respond to incidents on and off a campus. When communication breaks down, neither force is able to respond as efficiently or to protect its officers as well.
When Mr. Margolis was chief of police at the University of Vermont, his officers had statewide jurisdiction. Still, he knew to ask for help when there was a homicide on the campus.
“The case was mine, but my officers hadn’t investigated a homicide in as long as I could remember,” he says. “So what did I do? I called the local police chief, who is a friend and collaborator. I gave it to his detectives.”
How can campus police forces build trust with students and neighbors?
The attention and controversy that follow incidents like the shooting at the University of Cincinnati should not be the first catalyst for communication between the campus police and the community, says Mr. Perry, of Florida State.
Campus police forces should routinely host town-hall meetings and maintain open lines of communication with students in leadership positions like Greek chapters or student government, he recommends. That communication should exist before, during, and after a controversy or a crisis on or near the campus, he says.
“You share the results regardless of what they are — good, bad, or ugly,” he says. “If it went textbook and that’s the way it was, so be it. But if it didn’t go 100 percent correct, you still are transparent and talk about ways to improve.”
