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> many American universities have police forces I attended a small private university (in the news recently, for the wrong reasons), and their "police" (aka pu
by lukeqsee 12y ago
> many American universities have police forces
I attended a small private university (in the news recently, for the wrong reasons), and their "police" (aka public safety) force was almost completely on a power trip. I once was asked if they could search my car (with zero due cause), to which I refused. The "officer" verbally escalated the situation until it was obvious he was going to "search" my car or cause me significant problems. I acquiesced. I was later questioned by administrative authority why I refused and my refusal was used as leverage.
Let's leave policing to police.
- smt88 12y agoCampus police may have similar (or the same) training as state police[1], apparently. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campus_police#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campus_police#United_States
- lukeqsee 12y agoI wish. Most of this force is criminal justice students, with a few GAs, and a few professional supervisors. I have heard they have a pretty good collaboration with local municipal police, so anything happening on the campus could be passed off to them if jurisdiction issues arise.
- ZanyProgrammer 12y agoIt depends on whether or not the campus police can arrest and carry firearms. If not, then yes, its usually unarmed students and employees.
- jonlucc 12y agoI'm sure it varies by department/university, but the police at my not-very-big urban university had it's own force comprised of sworn county police officers. That empowered them to give speeding tickets on the public streets through campus, and they were able to have very good response times to campus emergencies. I never had negative contact with them, but that's anecdotal. The medical campus had emergency buttons on blue poles, and if you pressed one, you'd get like 4 or 5 emergency responses. Campus police, city police, and 2 or 3 of the hospitals had security or police on site.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- sdoering 12y ago> my refusal was used as leverage What happened to: "The law presumes all innocent of crime until proven guilty." (Source: Law Reports of the Supreme Court of Ohio, 1835)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- TeMPOraL 12y ago"Terrorism" happened. And all the liberties went under the bus.
- ptaipale 12y agoI'm under the impression that campus police departments were mostly set up by late 1960's, and that is when they established their current ways of working.
- zanny 12y agoYou are not being tried in a court under the ruleset of an individual state, the fed, etc. You are under the prosecution of a private entity and their private police force, which has no obligation to follow rules of state run police. The only reason they should care about the law of the land is when they themselves are violating it, and there is no law that says "all private police and prosecution must also abide by innocent until proven guilty".
- cowsandmilk 12y agoThe actions of university police are very dependent on how they are set up. There are two categories: 1) Those that are glorified private security firms 2) Those that are actual police with authority to arrest and investigate. If you go to a school with type (1), they are much more likely to violate these rights as they have no real investigative authority outside the university judicial system. You can sometimes have issues with (2) if they know they will just be referring your case to the internal university judicial system, but they are often more professional in getting any evidence cleanly.
- 12y ago
- biafra 12y agoWhat "significant problems" was he threatening you with?
- lukeqsee 12y agoHe did not explicitly threaten me. However, because the administration pretty much just listens to what public safety says, things like enrollment were potentially at stake.[0,1] I was not willing to trade those potentials for a search that I knew would result in nothing. [0] This is evidenced by the fact that my initial refusal was brought up later in a meeting with the administration. [1] Imagine with me: officer assumes that my refusal implies possession of banned substance, uses refusal to file a report in that vein, two days later I'm force to prove to the administration that I didn't have the banned substance at the time. That's obviously impossible. Edit: grammar.
- hellbanner 12y agoI think you were bullied with empty threats.
- tlrobinson 12y agoMy experience was the opposite. Campus police were generally on the students' side. It probably had something to do with the school being in a fairly high crime rate area.
- lukeqsee 12y agoTo their chagrin, their job mostly consisted of catching people breaking the strict campus conduct policy as opposed to dealing with real problems.