A police-free campus is possible

Nationally, campus policing did not develop until after the 1960s and 1970s, largely in response to activism against the Vietnam War. (Scott Olson | Getty Images)

“We find it important to remind higher education stakeholders that university policies, including those related to the time, place and manner of protests, are not law. And while violations of these policies may be subject to due process and adjudication under campus conduct procedures, they in no way constitute a justifiable reason to mobilize the police and use the power of the State as a weapon to enforce respect and order on campus. Doing so, as many institutions have done, constitutes not only a blatant disregard for their commitments to preparing students to engage in a diverse and participatory democracy, but also a dangerous display of fascist authoritarianism. – Dr. Charles Davis IIIprofessor at the University of Michigan and director of the Campus Abolition Lab, writing with colleagues for Inside higher education

If we learned anything from last spring’s violent crackdown on the student Palestine solidarity movement, it would be this: It is time to end our national experiment in campus policing.

This is an experiment, because the militarized police forces we take for granted on campus today are actually only about 50 or 60 years old. In 1955, the UNH student newspaper honored Police Chief Louis Bourgoin upon his retirement after 37 years of service…as a force of one, both for the campus and for the city of Durham. By 1981, the newspaper reported that the campus police ranks had grown to 25 full-time officers.

What happened in the meantime? Student demonstrations.

Nationally, campus policing did not develop until after the 1960s and 1970s, largely in response to activism against the Vietnam War. We know how terrible this turned out. And yet, despite the murders occurring at Kent State and other campuses; despite continued violence, including the more recent killings of Samuel DuBose by University of Cincinnati police in 2015 and Jason Washington by Portland State University police in 2018; Despite the economic freefall that higher education finds itself in today, campus police have only grown in number and power. Reputational risk and finances – the twin obsessions of any university leader – seem to fade away when campus police reach out.

At UNH, classroom technology breaks down daily, while UNH police use expensive mobile surveillance cameras to protect Raytheon and BAE when they come to town for career fairs. At the height of the pandemic, full-time professors worked for several years without even increasing the cost of living. Our collective bargaining team at the time closely studied – and envied – what the UNH police union could get in its own contract, thanks to its representation by the Teamsters. The UNH Art Museum is now closed due to budget cuts, but the UNH Police can afford to maintain an Instagram account featuring the adorable “K-9 Officers” Maggie and Charlee (their “comfort dogs”) and inviting students to regularly scheduled “coffee parties.” with a cop.

People who study police public relations call this kind of thing “copaganda,” and it costs money. It is also a poor substitute for meeting students’ basic needs for food, housing, and mental health services – crises that were created by disinvestment in these services in the first place.

The rise of the so-called “police prosecutor” is particularly worrying. This position may be familiar to residents of small municipalities. But New Hampshire is one of only nine states allow the police will act as prosecutor. They are even rarer on college campuses, and it is widely recognized that this situation is problematic. As Nicholas Frye of the New Hampshire Bar Association wrote, “Allowing police departments to prosecute the crimes they accuse people of leaves no real internal check on the discretion of law enforcement agencies.” As we saw last spring, that means the same officer who tackled students to the ground could also be writing their sentences and negotiating their plea deals. There is very little incentive for a police officer in such a position to refuse to press charges.

Now that the student encampment movement has been effectively suppressed, the various task forces and task forces at universities across the country are beginning to release their reports on the spring crackdown. People are right to be skeptical of them. In the Connecticut Law ReviewDr. Dylan Rodriguez recently argued that these task forces amount to a form of modern counterinsurgency, which “is not simply inadequate to slow, interrupt, or end policing, carceral capture, and death ” ; quite the contrary – “it aims to maintain and relegitimize police power while expanding the parameters of policing.”

We should therefore not be surprised that UCLA outsourced his investigations at 21st Century Policing Solutions, a consulting firm staffed by former police commissioners and other police officers. Nor should we be surprised that the UNH Police Department “After Study” of their own arrests of student demonstrators on May 1 concludes that the police did a pretty good job that day. In fact, you can see them asking for even more resources to expand their own settings: the section on “lessons learned and recommended improvements” includes a recommendation to “increase staffing levels to support the identification and treatment of people in custody.” in detention.”

We should absolutely avoid investing any more money into this particular problem. It’s time to move away from campus police, not increase our dependence on them.

In New Hampshire – where we like to say we cherish individual liberty and fiscal conservatism – campus policing should be the last of the easiest solutions. They cost way too much and cause way more problems than they solve. Writers and activists like Mariame Kaba have long urged us to start imagining worlds differently – restructuring our communities so that people’s needs are met and we take care of each other instead of relying on police, prisons and prisons. monitoring.

In educational institutions in particular, we can and must be more bold in our imagination.