New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow recently wrote in a column that his son, a third-year at Yale University, was questioned at gunpoint as he was leaving the library, because he resembled a burglary suspect. The university did confirm that a man was briefly detained and released Saturday night, but nothing more about the nature of the encounter.
This incident is not the first to draw scrutiny over racial profiling by campus police. Chronicle reports tensions between minority students and campus police forces at the University of Pennsylvania, Vassar College and Wake Forest University.
In general, the issue of racial profiling and police officers’ use of force has been especially controversial as of late. The deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police officers have incited anger, especially since neither officer was indicted. Concerns over police power can be a university issue as well, especially given a recent report by the Justice Department that about two-thirds of campus police forces carry guns.
The likely reason for this increase is concern about school shootings, like the one at Virginia Tech in 2007. Armed campus officers would more easily be able to stop a gunman, should such an incident ever occur. But not all students might feel a net increase in safety. Blow expressed concern and fear about the potential outcome of his son’s situation, if he had “panicked” and “made what the officer considered a ‘suspicious’ movement.” He wrote, “Triggers cannot be unpulled. Bullets cannot be called back.”
Campus police officers — or any police officers, for that matter — do not have to cease carrying guns altogether. Threats which can only be combated with firearms are still very real. But we cannot ignore the issue of pulling a weapon too quickly or too frequently. We only have Blow’s word to go on that an officer pulled a gun on his son before asking for identification or telling him why he was being detained. But video footage of a 12-year-old black boy shot by a Cleveland police officer within two seconds of exiting his patrol car confirms this type of incident does happen, sometimes with horrifying outcomes.
Police forces, on campuses and otherwise, need to address the prevalence of racial profiling and the overuse of excessive force. According to Al Jazeera, Lt. John Farrell of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department says one effective technique is using realistic scenarios to retrain officers to avoid “mistake-of-fact shootings,” where an officer thinks he sees a weapon but there isn’t one. Another potential solution is to give police officers more extensive training in other apprehension and defense techniques, such as mixed martial arts, so they would face less situations where it was necessary to use a firearm.
In all cases, police are supposed to maintain safety, and if students do not feel safe, they are not fulfilling their purpose. If students continue to voice concern over mistreatment, campus police forces should be open to using some of the same techniques being used by some city police departments to reduce racial profiling and avoidable violent incidents which occur because of it.
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