Police Confront the Price Tag of Prepping for Guns on Campus

Campus police officers train for the everyday and the extreme, and the encroachment of guns on campus is starting to permeate both ends of that spectrum.

Consider the ever-present, if remote, threat of an active shooter: Some institutions are turning to costly surveillance technology to detect and deter that unlikely event.

But guns on campus is no longer an improbable hypothetical. Several states, including Utah and Colorado, have passed “campus carry” laws, which allow people with concealed-handgun licenses to bring their firearms into public-college buildings. On August 1, Texas will follow suit when Senate Bill 11 takes effect.

Leaving aside the rationale for allowing guns on campus, the idea that classmates may be packing heat in lecture halls or dormitory rooms will become routine in some students’ lives. And that reality is forcing campus-safety departments to rethink their policing by hiring more officers, altering facilities, and educating the public.

A Bump in the Road

Some officials, like William F. Taylor, think the Texas legislation will cause only a marginal shift in campus policing.

Mr. Taylor is president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators and the chief of police at Collin College, in Texas. To hold a right-to-carry license, Texans usually have to be at least 21, which limits the number of students who might be armed, said Mr. Taylor.

He remembers a similar anxiety about guns hit Collin College when Texas became an open-carry state, in January (meaning licensed firearm holders may carry guns openly in public spaces). But on campuses, that issue “is nothing, now,” Mr. Taylor said.

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He predicted the changes in Collin’s police department would be minimal (the law does not apply to community colleges until 2017), and he expects the same for other Texas campuses.

Colleges and universities might install gun lockers or safes in public areas like laboratories, but the price of doing that will be “kind of like a bump.”

“But once it happens,” he said, “it won’t be a major ongoing cost.”

For some institutions, though, that bump will be larger than for others. The University of Houston plans to install 25 gun-storage safes, add surveillance equipment, and modify several buildings to ensure that weapons are properly secured, wrote Ceaser Moore, the university’s chief of police, in an email. Administrators have also approved hiring additional officers, though Mr. Moore could not estimate the cost.

Otto Glenewinkel, a police officer at Texas State University, in San Marcos, said his department planned to add three officers. Each will be paid about $70,000 a year, which over time becomes “a good chunk of change,” he said.

The campus will also erect signs, which Mr. Glenewinkel said can be “horribly expensive.” And the department has sponsored additional dispatcher training, officer training, and public education about the law, all programs that will continue into the fall.

“It adds up quick,” he said.

At Texas A&M University at College Station, Chris Meyer, assistant vice president for safety and security, said the university would not “spend state dollars” to provide public gun lockers. (Students will be able to rent them in dorms.)

And though the police department is growing, that expansion is not due to campus carry, said Mr. Meyer. He said costs and security-system changes had been minimal so far, but “the jury is still out” for the future.

Others at Texas A&M are more concerned. Laura Estill, an assistant professor of English, said the legislation had placed an undue financial burden on campuses, and now her university was struggling to adjust.

Faculty Fears About Shootings

Last year, we asked readers to tell us about their fears of a mass shooting on campus. Here’s a sampling of their responses:

“I worry about being places where large groups gather. I’m leery of leaving my office.”

“Take responsibility for your own safety. Learn how to safely use firearms. Learn situational awareness.”

“People afraid of campus shootings are typically people that know nothing about guns.”

Explore hundreds of other reader submissions.

Ms. Estill said university officials had not addressed professors’ concerns about armed students in their offices, and had made the process for professors to declare their offices gun-free zones time-consuming, especially for adjunct faculty members.

Administrators also have not considered the added cost of processing an influx of reports caused by more gun sightings on the campus, said Ms. Estill.

“It kind of feels like we’re swimming upstream here,” she said, “and it’s so big we can’t handle it.”

University of Texas campuses are also considering how to balance the additional duties campus carry may require of officers. David E. Daniel, deputy chancellor of the University of Texas system, said police departments would probably “reprioritize their time,” make “continuous tweaks” to their policing strategy, and seek to outfit campus buildings to satisfy the law.

Mr. Daniel said the costs of such changes have not been tracked, but the main expense has been the time it took to compile public input on the law through forums, websites, and committees. He predicted the financial strain of campus carry for the police would “always be a challenge, but not a terribly large burden.”

Gunshot-Detection Tech

As some colleges modify their buildings for campus carry, others are safeguarding theirs against active shooters. Some institutions, such as Temple University, in Philadelphia, and Cerritos College, in Norwalk, Calif., are conducting reality-based training exercises to teach students and staff members how to respond in such a crisis. But a few institutions are turning to a burgeoning technology industry to protect their campuses.

The University of Connecticut recently installed a gunshot-detection system in a busy campus building. The system was donated by Robert Hotaling, an alumnus of the university and chief executive of Verbi Inc., a threat-detection company that entered the higher-education market this year.

The technology was originally developed for war zones, said Mr. Hotaling. Gunshot detectors — which resemble smoke detectors but pick up firearm discharges — are installed throughout the interior and exterior of a building. They sync up with the existing video feed that campus police officers monitor. Then, when a gun goes off, they are notified and can locate the shooter through video and GPS on their phones and computers.

An average college would pay roughly $40,000 for the system, but a smaller campus could outfit its facilities and grounds for around $10,000, said Martha Sager, Verbi’s senior vice president for business development.

The technology’s goal is to slice the time it takes for first responders to arrive on the scene, which can save lives, said Mr. Hotaling. He wishes more colleges would be “proactive” about preparing for such an event.

Christian Connors, chief executive of Shooter Detection Systems, said his company had installed gunshot systems at three universities and is talking to half a dozen more. Most colleges, he said, do not publicize their systems because it could invite “unwanted attention from a deranged gunman.”

Ed Jopeck, a program manager at Battelle, a nonprofit scientific-research organization that has developed shooter-detection technology, said colleges had been slow to adopt such systems, largely due to the cost. He said campus police departments make continual compromises on how to use their money, choosing between combating high-frequency, low-consequence crimes — like burglary — and low-frequency, high-consequence crimes — like an active shooter.

“Many err on the side of dealing with today’s headaches,” he said, “rather than preventing tomorrow’s disaster.”