Letter: Student calls public comments at forum 'deeply disturbing and ignorant,' supports arming campus police department

02/27/09 - To the Cigar,

While I was unable to attend the forum concerning this matter, many of the comments that I have read seem deeply disturbing and ignorant and I can only hope that the panel, in good judgement, will take them with a grain of salt.

From what I could tell, those well-educated in such things as law enforcement, its dangers and the needs of those officers to do their job effectively, were being drowned out by people who believe that because they are a student in one area, that qualifies them to be an expert in everything.

From personal experience and common sense, those who break the law in a manner that threatens the safety of the public do not heed lawful commands or become easily "talked down," as one student put it.

This is not Hollywood. There most likely will not be some hostage-negotiation where there are threats and Denzel Washington or Russel Crowe will become a hero by talking someone down.

If these situations could all be avoided by disarming a criminal verbally, we would not send law enforcent officers to an academy to learn how to better protect the public. We would simply hire the abundant supply of communications majors that we have at this university and employ them as the "police" force.

While we're at it, why are any officers armed? I mean, criminals are so reasonable and law abiding....ohhh wait. They're not. And they don't listen to or care what cops have to say. Holy crap, who saw that coming?

Seeing as how that is not the case, life is not all sunshine and rainbows and we do not live in a world where everyone is reasonable, sane or happy to live within or follow the rules and laws that keep everyone safe, law enforcement officers need to be armed with the training and equipment to at least match criminals with the intent to do harm.

It is unfair to expect a department like South Kingstown to patrol and protect one entire community, parts of Exeter and West Greenwich and a campus of more than 15,000 on top of that. Which was the precise reason for having a campus police department in the first place.

Here is a potential situation that I think would be obvious to people when anyone thinks about this issue: An armed suspect intends to do harm to a student. There is a campus police officer there. He has nothing other than his voice to disarm the suspect. The suspect, believe it or not, has no respect for law enforcement and shoots the officer and student. Now you have two victims and a shooter on the loose, instead of a solved situation. At the conclusion of this situation, there would be a quick series of hearings and campus police would be armed as a result because everyone would see that this situation could have been avoided by arming campus police in the first place.

We need to break the cycle in this state of waiting until horrible things happen to try to find a solution that COULD have prevented it. Armed police are a pre-emptive solution to these potentially dangerous situations.

As a student, I want my campus police, not just the police in the neighboring town, to be armed at a level to protect me should a situation deteriorate. As the brother of a student, I want him to have the same level of protection. As a boyfriend, I do not want to worry about my girlfriend being without that level of protection. As the son of a faculty member, I do not want my mother to be without that level of protection.

I would never call the police in a dangerous situation and want to hear them say, "Hold on, let me call the other police department who can help you." As good as they are, without the ability to match the deadly force of criminals, it is not fair to our officers, their families or ourselves and loved ones to sacrifice this level of safety while we wait for a situation to give an excuse for officers to carry weapons.

Please allow our officers to protect us and do their jobs professionally, effectively and at the highest level possible.



Thank You,



Jason Coppa