I am not sure how I feel about this, maybe just sad that this is an issue in today’s world. I have a child at Northeastern and the only time I worried about his safety was when he did not return a text when there was a shooting next to campus (as a college student he sleeps at strange times). Does this make the campus safer? Is this an overreaction? Should Boston police handle this? If I had a child selecting a school now would this make me more or less comfortable?
They mentioned that MIT officers carry guns. I couldn’t help but remember that an MIT officer died when the Boston Marathon bombers tried (and failed) to get his. My daughter lives and works in Cambridge near MIT; I also just don’t know how I feel about all of this.
There’s a wide difference between campus officers carrying handguns and semi-automatic rifles with greater range and power to penetrate building structures/vehicles/bystanders not near the scene.
Especially in a densely populated urban area as the neighborhoods where NEU is located.
Yes. There is a difference. Just not the difference you’re implying. The article doesn’t specify the type of rifles the Northeastern Campus Police will be using, but they are almost certainly .223 caliber rifles. The .223 caliber round has less problems with “over-penetration” than most pistol rounds.
All universities are concerned about their “image”. This is generating a lot of buzz locally and even nationally. I applaud Northeastern for doing what they feel is best to protect their community rather than debating how this will be negatively perceived by others and any negative effects it will have on their image. Northeastern’s campus police, like those at BU, MIT and Harvard, are fully trained and deputized police officers. They are not rent-a-cops.
I’d be more inclined to agree if NEU was a self-contained campus in a less densely populated area, not located in the midst of a densely populated urban neighborhood.
As such, I don’t blame the Boston Police department and possibly some neighbors living adjacent/near NEU having concerns as outlined below:
From their vantage point, it seems the BPD and neighbors living nearby/adjacent to NEU feel this action by NEU was done without adequate consultation or consideration of their concerns.
Our very large (3,000 kids) high school campus set in an affluent suburb started to have problems with drugs (the school was originally supposed to house 1k kids, has been growing like crazy over the past decade), so the county built a police station right next to the campus. Unsurprisingly, things have improved.
We think nothing of constantly seeing armed cops, cop cars, and drug dogs wandering around campus-the kids have a good relationship with the police, have no issues with the presence of the police there (a lot of the cops have kids going to that school), and there’s a pretty amazing facebook page that keeps everyone informed about what’s going on on a day to day basis (maintained by the police).
The police did a practice terrorist attack on the school one day earlier in the year and kids were allowed to participate. I didn’t let the girls do it because, having been in a traumatic situation when I was a teenager (not terrorist related, but a catastrophic train accident), I knew they would be deeply affected by it, even though it was a “faux” attack. The practice run led to some good changes in how the school allows people on campus, and most agreed it was a good learning experience from all involved.
But my point here is that having armed police on campus can be a good thing if the relationship between the police, the campus administration, and the students is open, supportive, and transparent. They need to be all on the same side.
They are talking about having rifles available for deployment, not putting officers on patrol with them. If these guys are sworn officers (i.e. real cops) not sure why Boston PD would care - I bet Boston PD has similar equipment available.
Here is an interview with the Northeastern campus police chief:
http://www.northeastern.edu/news/2015/12/a-conversation-with-michael-davis/
In Massachusetts campus police departments are under the jurisdiction of the MA State Police. The Boston Police Department’s disapproval of this may be part of a larger “turf war” between local and state police.
The bad guys are coming with guns, whether we like it or not. I would rather have campus police able to handle these issues quickly and independently, without the need to rely on backup.
IMO, they should carry them on patrol too. What’s the use of having them locked up somewhere? Might as well not even have them at that point.
some schools have security guards and some schools have actual police departments. I think even if a school has only security guards the local or state police should have 24/7 presence on campus. I am less concerned with university police being armed (however they are armed) than say a private security company or college run non police security.
The article’s isn’t about whether campus cops should be armed at all or not.
Rather it’s whether the arms in the campus cop’s immediate arsenal should include more powerful/longer ranged semi-auto rifles.
It’s the latter issue which is being debated.
Secondly, an issue of this sort needs input from more than the groups named above…especially considering NEU’s campus is in a few densely populated urban neighborhoods.
What about the input from those neighborhoods’ residents living adjacent/near NEU’s campus or the BPD responsible for policing those neighborhoods? While private colleges can ignore them as it seems like BPD felt from their statement…doing so tends to exacerbate the separation and increase the likelihood of poor town-gown relations between the college and the local communities surrounding its campus.
Police on patrol usually do not walk around with long guns of any kind, since the need to use them is rare compared with the need to use their hands for other purposes while on duty (their other weapons, hand gun, stick, and maybe Taser, do not occupy their hands when not in use).
I was talking about holstered pistols, not long rifles. You’re right, I can’t see them carrying rifles around campus…
They are outside the jurisdiction, and don’t get to provide input. Just like the town that adjoins my own has it’s own police force and equips them as they see fit.
I don’t know about the separation of jurisdictions being so clear-cut considering many urban campuses and components of such campuses like NEU aren’t self-contained…but are right next to and are scattered within one or more urban neighborhoods with residents who aren’t members of the campus’ community. .
It appears people in the neighborhood don’t regard the semi-automatics as a positive.
I guess the debate here is, can you buy a plot of land and turn it into a landfill that stops 1 inch from the neighbors’ land? I suppose you could, in all legality. But doing so without warning the people around you, or asking their opinion, is still poor form.
Wouldn’t hurt for the university to liase more with the locals, so they know what’s being done and feel that they have a voice. Communication isn’t a panacea for any disagreement, but it can certainly resolve many issues.
The linked article says that the university says that “The rifles will be deployed in campus police vehicles during high-level threats”, implying (but not specifically stating) that they are not normally carried other than during whatever “high-level threats” are.
So what does it mean? Hard to say without more information than what the article gives.