Campus police renew call to carry arms
Va. Tech slayings rekindle debate
Campus police at several Boston-area colleges are renewing calls to be allowed to carry arms in the aftermath of the mass shootings at Virginia Tech.
Brandeis University, which has rejected calls to arm its police in the past, has agreed to reconsider the idea. Framingham State College officials are talking about it, and students at Suffolk University are circulating a petition calling for an armed force.
The majority of campus police departments in the nation's four year colleges, including Virginia Tech's, are already armed, but officials at some small colleges for years have staunchly opposed the idea even as their police have requested arms. The big schools in Massachusetts, including Boston University, Northeastern, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts, and all five campuses of the University of Massachusetts, have armed police. Most colleges in the State College system also have armed police forces.
Although Seung-Hui Cho killed himself before police could reach him, his killing of 32 students and professors April 16 raised a disturbing question for those who live or work on a campus with unarmed police: What if someone on their campus went on a shooting spree? What could campus police do?
The answer, according to law enforcement protocol, is nothing -- except to call for backup from city police. The batons and mace that unarmed police typically carry would be useful in the face of a gunman.
Brandeis, during the summer, plans to set up a committee to study the need for arms, though it previously has denied repeated requests for at least two decades from its police force for permission to carry guns.
"The prevailing opinion has always been that this is fundamentally a safe campus," said Brandeis spokesman Dennis Nealon. "What Brandeis is wondering now is, is it a different world, maybe? . . . This is post-9/11 and post-Virginia Tech."
A 1995 federal government survey of 581 four-year colleges found that 81 percent of police departments at public schools had armed officers and 34 percent of private ones did. The government surveyed campuses with more than 2,500 students. The bigger the school, the more likely it was to have armed police, the survey found. More recent data aren't available, but more universities have armed their police in recent years, including Bentley College and Brown University.
Ronald Haley, a patrolman at Brandeis and president of its police union, said officers need guns because otherwise they are helpless in the face of an armed person. They are taught to retreat from anyone with a weapon and call for armed reinforcements.
"Our number one rule is to go home to our families at the end of the day," Haley said.
Even though Brandeis, with 5,300 students, is not in the heart of a big city, Waltham deals with gangs and drugs, he said. Students, he said, can be magnets for crime because they are sometimes careless with their laptops and iPods and some use illegal drugs.
Some students object to the idea of having guns on campus, even in the hands of trained campus police.
"We have a very powerful sense of community here and we look out for one another," said Alison Schwartzman, a Brandeis junior and the outgoing president of the Student Union. "The sense of community and the sense of safety would be disturbed very much by having guns on campus."
In the past, Nealon said, campus administrators have denied the request to arm campus police because they believed outside law enforcement agencies had more experience and were better equipped to handle crisis situations. Unarmed campus police around the country typically carry only batons and mace. To become armed, they would have to take a 40- to 80-hour course on firearms and undergo annual refresher training.
Suffolk University rejected the union's call for firearms two years ago because so many police stations are nearby, but the campus officers are planning to renew their request following the Virginia Tech tragedy, said Aykaz Klian, a corporal on Suffolk University's force and acting president of the campus police union.
Klian said he has had nightmares about violent confrontations in which he would be powerless to respond. The night after the Virginia Tech shootings, he said he dreamed that he and other officers found themselves surrounded by gunfire and had to retreat.
"They are putting us in the line of fire with absolutely no defense," he said. "If we can't defend ourselves, how are we going to defend our community?"
Suffolk student Ryan Fattman, a senior from Sutton, said that when he watched the news coverage of Virginia Tech, he was overcome with regret that he hadn't vocally supported campus police when the administration considered the issue two years ago. He and a friend are circulating a petition to allow the police to carry guns, and have gathered 300 signatures.
Francis X. Flannery, vice president and treasurer at Suffolk, said in a written statement that the school would review the students' petition, but until now, officials have felt it's unnecessary given the school's urban location -- with Boston police, State Police, and capital police nearby.
At Emerson College, the now-defunct police union had asked for the force to be armed , but the school's president, Jacqueline Liebergott, opposes the idea, mainly for safety reasons, said college spokesman David Rosen. The campus is compact and in the middle of the city, with police always on Boston Common, he said. "There are risks associated with people having firearms in your buildings," Rosen said. "They could lose it, or in a fight someone could take it."
Several proponents of arming campus police say they believe many schools oppose the idea out of fear of lawsuits if something goes awry with an officer's gun.
John King, director of public safety at Tufts University, said no officer has discharged a gun except while training during his 18 years with Tufts police and his 10 years previously at Northeastern.
Police also say the cost of arming campus officers is low. Brad Medeiros, chief of the Framingham State College police, said arming his 14 sworn officers would cost about $24,000 for training, firearms, and other gear . Medeiros said he hopes the Virginia Tech tragedy will help make his case for armed police.
Campus police, overseen by their particular colleges or universities, are sworn officers who have regular police powers bestowed on them either by the State Police or the city where the college is located. State Police training for campus officers is 16 weeks.
Law enforcement specialists said Virginia Tech will spur debate about arms for campus police around the country. Many of the specialists are critical of schools that won't arm officers, saying they are clinging to a vision of the Ivory Tower as rising above the troubles of the real world.
"I don't see how you can put a person out there who is dressed like a police officer and expected to make arrests, and you don't give them the tools to defend themselves," said Sergeant Jerry DeCristofaro, director of campus police training at the Massachusetts State Police Academy.
Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com. 