Campus police

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Campus police in the United States and Canada are often sworn police officers employed by a public school district, college or university to protect the campus and surrounding areas and the people who live on, work on and visit it. Many campus police forces employ a combination of police officers, security guards and students. Responsibilities of student employees can range from limited administrative activities to law enforcement functions comparable to those held by commissioned officers.

Contents

Basis

Campus police departments are established to provide a quicker response time to incidents on campus and to offer campus-specific services not necessarily available from local policing organizations. For many campuses, if there were no campus police the local agencies would have to almost double in size. Many larger universities have a student population equal to or greater than the civilian population of the community.

Campus police can also become familiar with the campus buildings and people, providing better service to the campus community.

Campus police's jurisdiction varies by location. Some university police have jurisdiction statewide, some have city wide or county wide jurisdiction. Some campus police departments' jurisdiction is limited to campus property, but may also include property and roadways adjacent to the campus.

History

As a result of the domestic violence and mass civil disturbances found across the nation in the 1960s and early 1970s, campus security often proved ineffective against riots and other violent civil demonstrations, occasionally resulting in injury to both the students and the officers. These campus security officers were often poorly trained, ineffectively led and unprepared to effectively respond to many turbulent and unanticipated events. Consequently, a need emerged for a better solution for campus security, which led to the creation of university/campus police departments across the nation. Laws were passed and regulations enacted that provided officers with the necessary statutory authority to perform their expanded roles. Campus security officers were required to meet higher training and educational standards, particularly when dealing with campus-specific issues such as non-violent crisis management and riot training.

Alternatively, on some campuses sworn police officers work side by side with campus security officers who perform similar duties and often assist each other. While some universities and colleges just employ campus security officers, it is common in the United States for a major university to have its own police force. On many campuses, the police employ students to act as escorts for students who do not want to walk alone at night, allowing the sworn police officers to concentrate on other enforcement related duties.

Full service law enforcement agencies in campus environments have proven to be a functional solution to many of the problems that had resulted from the previously poorly managed security forces.

Canada

Canadian University Campus Police are peace officers, sworn in as special constables by the municipal police services board in the jurisdiction that the respective University is based. Training is standardized by the provincial government and is similar to training that municipal/provincial police receive. University Police Special Constables in Canada do not carry firearms however municipal, provincial and federal police officers in Canada are armed. Most campus police special constable are equipped with handcuffs, body armor, batons and pepper spray.

Sri Lanka

The University of Ceylon (Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon until 1972) had a unit known as the Marshals on all its campuses. They were a Campus Police unit responsible for maintaining student discipline on instructions of the vice-chancellor and the senior faculty and for providing security for university students and property. They did not carry firearms and law enforcement within the university was provided by the police.

After the University of Ceylon was dissolved, its former campuses became independent universities and maintained the Marshals units. These were dropped in the 1980s and replaced by private security guards which did not have the authority to maintain student discipline. Subsequently, clashes between student groups and Ragging resulting in student deaths were blamed on the lack of disciplinary or actual control applied by the security guards. In resent years there have been calls to have the Marshals reinstituted.1

United States

Most university police officers are commissioned through their state Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) after completing established training and pre-licensure preparation (This is usually equivalent to that of a municipal or state peace officers. They routinely attend the same police academy as local or state police officers). Many departments operate some of the same units as municipal agencies such as detective units, special response teams (SWAT or SRT), canine units, bicycle patrol units, motorcycle patrol units, and community policing units. In some cases, campus police agencies are better equipped and staffed then municipal and county agencies in their area due to the significant amount of funding available in a college environment.

The campus police in most state owned schools tend to be a division of the state's police, giving them state-wide authority and jurisdiction similar to that afforded to state police. Officers of the Colorado State University Police Department and the University of Colorado (Boulder) Police Department are commissioned officers of the state of Colorado, but also hold commissions through the cities and counties where their universities are based (respectively Fort Collins and Larimer County for CSU and Boulder and Boulder County for CU).

A distinction between authority and jurisdiction should be noted. Jurisdiction is the geographic area in which an agency routinely patrols, and operates in. Authority refers to the powers of an agency and its members.

The Authority of campus police is usually similar to the local or state police.


References

  1. ^ Marshals back in universities, Associated Newspapers of Ceylon

See also

External links

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  • This page was last modified on 26 December 2008, at 08:52.

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