{"id":52982,"date":"2020-06-25T01:51:40","date_gmt":"2020-06-25T08:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=52982"},"modified":"2020-06-25T01:51:40","modified_gmt":"2020-06-25T08:51:40","slug":"us-universities-should-invest-in-students-not-in-policing-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/us-universities-should-invest-in-students-not-in-policing-them\/","title":{"rendered":"US universities should invest in students, not in policing them"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, weeks of persistent protest against police brutality have already begun to shift policy, including in higher education.<\/p>\n

A few days before the Minneapolis city council voted to\u00a0disband the city\u2019s police department entirely<\/a>, the\u00a0University of Minnesota<\/a>\u00a0declared that it would\u00a0sever its contract<\/a>\u00a0with the Minneapolis Police Department for policing large events. The university\u2019s own armed campus police, however, will remain.<\/p>\n

As support for police reform continues to rise, it is vital to also interrogate the ubiquitous and ever-expanding function of university police departments.<\/p>\n

The rapid expansion of university policing began amid the tumult and campus protests of the\u00a01960s and 1970s<\/a>. Policing\u2019s foothold in higher education was further solidified in 1990 with the passage of the\u00a0Clery Act<\/a>, which requires that universities provide detailed records of crime on their campuses. Today,\u00a0nearly 70\u00a0per cent<\/a>\u00a0of four-year colleges with 2,500 or more students employ sworn police officers; the figure rises to over 90\u00a0per cent when considering public campuses, where\u00a0nearly 75\u00a0per cent<\/a>\u00a0of US college students are enrolled.<\/p>\n

This growth in campus policing has occurred in spite of marked declines in crime. From 2005 to 2018,\u00a0reported campus crime dropped by 43\u00a0per cent<\/a>. Meanwhile, university police departments\u00a0acquired<\/a>\u00a0military-grade weapons and armoured vehicles,\u00a0formed their own SWAT teams<\/a>\u00a0and expanded their enforcement activities into\u00a0communities around campus<\/a>. None of these innovations is designed to address the\u00a0burglaries, car thefts or sex crimes<\/a>\u00a0that make up the bulk of campus offences.<\/p>\n

Instead, campus police often perpetuate the same racial inequalities found in policing more widely. The six years that I\u00a0was a graduate student at\u00a0Yale University\u00a0\u2013\u00a0home to the first university police department<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 provide clear examples of the harm inflicted by campus police on students and the wider community.<\/p>\n

In 2015, a black undergraduate, Tahj Blow, the son of\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0columnist Charles Blow, was coming from the library when he was\u00a0held at gunpoint<\/a>\u00a0by an officer investigating a reported burglary. The suspect, whom Blow supposedly resembled, was arrested later that night, and the officer involved\u00a0claims<\/a>\u00a0that he never pointed his firearm directly at Blow.<\/p>\n

In the spring of 2019, a Yale police officer was off campus when he, along with an officer from Hamden, a suburb of New Haven, opened fire on a vehicle occupied by two black community members. The passenger, 22-year-old Stephanie Washington, was shot and suffered a fractured pelvis and spine. No weapons were found. Although the Hamden officer was\u00a0charged<\/a>\u00a0with reckless endangerment and assault, the Yale officer was neither fired nor charged with a crime.<\/p>\n

University police have also killed. Cameron Redus, a white student at the private Catholic\u00a0University of the Incarnate Word, was\u00a0shot and killed<\/a>\u00a0by one of the Texas institution\u2019s officers during an off-campus traffic stop for drunk driving. Although the officer resigned after the 2013 shooting and Redus\u2019 family sought monetary damages from the university, it was only last month that the Texas Supreme Court rejected the university\u2019s claims of legal immunity and allowed the case to proceed.<\/p>\n

In 2015, a\u00a0University of Cincinnati\u00a0police officer shot and killed Samuel DuBose, an unarmed black man, during a traffic stop for a missing front number plate and a suspended licence. Although the officer was fired from the police department, criminal charges for murder and voluntary manslaughter were eventually\u00a0dismissed<\/a>. The university also paid the officer a settlement of\u00a0more than $350,000\u00a0<\/a>(\u00a3277,000) for back pay and legal fees.<\/p>\n

University police are thus implicated in the same policing system that disproportionately stops, searches, arrests and kills black Americans. As the push for\u00a0defunding the police<\/a>\u00a0gathers momentum, it is imperative that colleges and universities re-examine how funds are allocated to campus police and how those dollars might be better funnelled to resources that directly \u2013 and non-punitively \u2013 improve life on campus.<\/p>\n

Instead of relying on police to manage mental health crises, for example, resources could be put towards expanding\u00a0mental health<\/a>\u00a0care on campus. Such investments would help proactively to reduce cases of acute psychological distress, which are too often left to armed police to address. This would, in turn, help save the lives of students like\u00a0Scout Schultz<\/a>, who was shot and killed in 2017 by a\u00a0Georgia Institute of Technology\u00a0officer during a mental health crisis.<\/p>\n

The resources currently given to campus police to run programmes designed to reduce drug and alcohol misuse, stalking and intimate partner violence might, instead, be used to form or support existing campus groups that specialise in addressing these issues through non-legal means.<\/p>\n

As a decade\u00a0of disinvestment<\/a>\u00a0from education is exacerbated by the\u00a0looming budget crisis<\/a>\u00a0caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, colleges and universities must seriously consider where increasingly limited dollars will be spent. Instead of police with arrest powers and firearms, institutions should look at how they can invest in student health and well-being.<\/p>\n

It is by shifting resources directly to students that they can make good on their promises of fostering diverse, inclusive and racially equitable campuses.<\/p>\n

Author Bio: <\/strong>Michael Sierra-Ar\u00e9valo is an assistant professor in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, weeks of persistent protest against police brutality have already begun to shift policy, including in higher education. A few days before the Minneapolis city council voted to\u00a0disband the city\u2019s police department entirely, the\u00a0University of Minnesota\u00a0declared that it would\u00a0sever its contract\u00a0with the Minneapolis Police Department for policing […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":52983,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[357238],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-52982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-policing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUS universities should invest in students, not in policing them - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/us-universities-should-invest-in-students-not-in-policing-them\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"US universities should invest in students, not in policing them - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, weeks of persistent protest against police brutality have already begun to shift policy, including in higher education. 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