Letter: Student offers compromises to state BOG in case of arming URI police

03/25/09 - To the Cigar, I feel that after personally considering and discussing the issue of arming campus police in class, I must chime in on the debate.

Clearly, this is a controversial issue because both sides of the debate have good reasons to support their opinions. If I were a campus police officer and received a call about a potentially violent situation, I would surely want a weapon to protect myself. After all, URI police undergo the same training in a police academy as any other city police officer. In fact, many are R.I. city cops that work part-time as URI police.

My main problem is the nature of the debate itself. From all I have read, it seems that we are arguing about this issue on a black-and-white spectrum. It is much more complicated than simply arming URI police or not.

What if we have the weapons only available in the main police headquarters? Or we arm them with non-deadly weapons? Probably the first weapon that comes to mind is the taser (cue our memories of the University of Florida's infamous "Don't Tase Me Bro!" incident).

Unfortunately, the roughly 180 deaths from police use of tasers has lead the U.S. Department of Justice to review the use of tasers in 2006 and lead Amnesty International to call for a suspension on their use.

Because of these types of incidents, many experts has coined terms such as less-deadly weapons rather than non-deadly weapons. There are a whole host of other less-deadly weapons that URI police could employ both to protect themselves and the student population. To name a few, URI police could use rubber, wax, or plastic bullets, bean bag rounds, mace, and paintball pepper-spray projectiles.

Unfortunately, none of these options are without the risk of being lethal. But I believe we must do something to protect URI from a worst case scenario like the Virginia-Tech massacre.

Let us say URI police are allowed to carry lethal or non-lethal weapons, but only at their main campus headquarters. In the worst-case scenario, someone reports a school shooting at URI. Police would be equipped to protect us, but how many minutes would it take them to retrieve the weapons and drive to the location of the assailant? Or for South Kingston police to arrive on the scene?

Perhaps in that time lives may be lost.

I believe the Board of Governors of Higher Education should consider the merits of the "in-between" possibilities between arming or not arming URI police.

Personally, I propose this compromise: have all URI police hold guns (or a form of less-deadly weapons) in a locked compartment in their cars, and only authorize them to retrieve and use these weapons when reports indicate a potentially violent incident.

So why don't I believe that URI police should carry lethal or less-deadly weapons on them at all times?

Because the function of URI police is mainly to deal with incidents created by students on campus, almost all of which do not require a weapon. URI police symbolically serve as something differential to that of other city cops because they enforce not just the law but URI's student handbook rules.

Take for example URI's status as a "moist campus," where residents who are over the age of 21 can carry a certain amount of alcohol. Incidents of underage drinking and marijuana possession are usually handled by URI's three-strike judicial system rather than through the R.I. legal system. URI's judicial system, as enforced through resident assistants and the URI police, allows students to better conform themselves to the standards of adult society without the potential long-term punishment.

Having URI police carry weapons at all times creates an unnecessarily intimidating image of their role as community police officers at URI.

But when the URI police do need weapons, I believe they should have them readily available in their vehicles to protect themselves and the student population.

John Lindemann