Police the Philosophy and Role

Police

The Philosophy and Role of University/College Public Safety

There are approximately 4,000 institutions of higher learning in the United States that serve 15 million students and several million faculty, staff, and visitors. Protecting these facilities is a very complex task. There is a keen debate centered on tightening access to information, facilities, and materials vs. maintaining an open campus environment. This question over the need to deal with risk and vulnerability creates new problem-solving challenges for public safety personnel (National Summit of Campus Public Safety, 2005).

Like any other community, colleges and universities experience countless problems and issues that relate to maintaining a safe, secure campus environment for students, faculty, staff, and others. There is also a need to address new issues related to terrorist threats and the effects of September 11, 2001 that have emerged on college and university campuses. In some places threat assessments have named colleges and universities as potential primary targets of terrorist activity (National Summit of Campus Public Safety, 2005).

The distinctiveness of security and police services on the nation's college and university campuses varies considerably. These variances tend to hold back community policing, collaboration, policy development, training, and other activities while weakening response capabilities to homeland security. The following are four primary types of security and police services that are common to the nation's college and university campuses:

1. Campus police department: this is a full-service agency that functions as part of the university. These officers have full police powers.

2. Security department or operation: this is a service agency that functions as part of the university. These personnel do not have full police powers and relies on municipal, county, or state police for support in criminal matters.

3. Contract security: This consists of private firms that are contracted to provide security services to the university. These firms rely on municipal, county, or state police agencies for support in dealing with criminal matters.

4. Local or state police: This is a municipal, county, or state police agency that provides police operations or services to the university under a contract or agreement.

On very large campuses, police and security procedures may be provided by a combination of all of these services, with some services being contracted to private vendors while others are maintained as the responsibility of the campus police or security agency. Some security departments rely on the use of off-duty police officers from local jurisdictions to supplement university personnel (National Summit of Campus Public Safety, 2005).

One factor that can make campus police and security operations very complex is the variations in the university or college's supervision authority. The chief of police at the university's department or the director of security often reports to a member of the university's management team. These people often lack familiarity with public safety operations. Campus chiefs of police and directors of security are often challenged by the opposing interests of their chief executive officers. Informing campus leaders about importance of public safety is vital to its success. Nonetheless, time constraints and other challenges and priorities imposed on these leaders make it difficult for them to devote any time to security and safety matters before the problems arise (National Summit of Campus Public Safety, 2005).

The look and feel of security on college and university campuses has changed dramatically since September 11th. Colleges and universities have implemented the following:

- updated their campus emergency management plans to include response protocols for an active shooter on campus, bomb threat, evacuation, lockdown and other high probability incidents that might occur.

- registered their campus emergency management plans with their local municipal police departments and county offices of emergency management.

- begun holding regular active shooter simulation training for sworn officers (Canas,

2008).

In order to further these efforts that have been taken, experts suggest that there should be a national agenda on campus safety created that sets forth both short-term and long-term direction. This agenda should be developed and embraced jointly by the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and other federal and nonprofit agencies and organizations committed to the safety and well-being of the nation's college and university campuses (National Summit of Campus Public Safety, 2005). There needs to be one plan in place so that everyone is on the same page.