Full time, New Hampshire certified, armed police officers walk the campuses of some New Hampshire state colleges and universities 24/7. However, at Keene State College the officers are unarmed and have to call in to the local police department to take judicial action.
Not only do these other campus police departments like Univeristy of New Hampshire (UNH) or Plymouth State University (PSU) have jurisdiction over the local police departments, but they also create a sense of safety and positive connections between officers and students.
PSU Sergeant Aaron Comeau said that PSU’s police department has all the same arrest powers as the local police department. The only difference is when the it comes to the department’s mission.
“Our mission varies from the local police department from time to time. We have a judicial process that we can utilize as well as the criminal process unlike the local police where they utilize the criminal justice process and that’s it. We act as a hybrid here sometimes, and we’re also responsible for all staff and their safety and responsible for building and ground security, alarm systems,” Comeau said.
PSU’s campus has about 6,000 students, which is only a little more than the number of students that attend KSC.
To manage a campus of that size, Comeau said that the department has 13 officers, whereas KSC has 17 officers. When asked if Comeau thought that number of officers was enough he said that it really depends on the season.
“Sometimes we could use twice that many and sometimes we don’t need that many. It’s a season thing for us and from one weekend to the next really,” Comeau said.
When responding to emergencies, PSU’s system is relatively similar to KSC’s although, like KSC, details of the plan cannot be released to the public. Comeau said PSU has a very comprehensive policy for emergency management. “We have a text alert system on campus that instantly send outs a message advising students where to go or what to do,” Comeau said.
Like PSU, KSC also has a text alert system but one thing that differs is that while PSU’s officers can take deadly force action immediately KSC’s campus safety has to call the Keene Police Department to come to campus.
KSC Assistant Director of Campus Safety Leonard Crossman said that Keene Police is located 1.5 miles from campus and can be on campus within a minute, and the fact that police cars can drive on campus may end a situation faster.
“Studies show that you should pull up as close as you can to the buildings with sirens on making as much noise as possible. If a shooter is inside a building and knows that police are outside often that signals the shooter that the end is near and they will either surrender or take their own life,” Crossman said.
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Although Keene’s local police department is located less than a mile away, Comeau said that the real benefit of a police department on campus comes from the connections students make with the officers.
“I think having your own police department on campus you become so much more involved in the academic process than you would if you were a local police officer. The local police department Police Chiefs responses has a very different mission and they don’t necessarily have to engage themselves into the student’s life other than for when it’s bad behavior,” Comeau said.
He continued, “We (PSU Police) are the model of community policing where we try and hire the right officers with the right demeanor and outlook and the ability to work with the students hand-in-hand. I mean we eat lunch with the students, we’re in the residential halls, each officer is assigned a liaison to a sports team for the fall, winter and spring, as well as a liaison for the residential halls. The officers also attend staff meetings there on routine basis, and they become the norm in college life and not necessarily looked at as a cop. So I think there’s a benefit to it, with the right personnel and the right people it can be a very good program and very self contained.”
In the informal survey conducted by the journalism public affairs class, 62 percent of students believe that campus safety should not have a larger presence on campus. However listed on the survey was a comments section (including a name was optional) and some students and staff would like to interact more with campus safety.
“I believe there should be training for students in case they need to help someone calm down,” said one female junior.“I don’t see them to often,” said another male junior.“I think they should have more presence in the daytime,” said another unidentified male senior.
A staff member who graduated KSC in 2012 said, “ As a student campus safety was not very nice or approachable when asking politely for help. I hope that has changed.”
Crossman said that the campus has a lockdown drill once a semester to test out systems in the event of an emergency. However, in an informal poll held on The Equinox website only nine percent of students said they had participated in a lockdown drill in college.
UNH Police Chief Paul Dean stated that his department often receives requests for presentations on active shooters and dealing with a spectrum of violence.“The programs we use are ‘Shots fired on Campus’–Guidance for surviving an active shooter situation and ‘Flash Point’–Recognizing and preventing violence on campus,” Dean stated.
When asked if KSC was thinking about doing more programs or training for students Crossman said, “In college we are all adults, you [the students] can make your own decision. We [Campus Safety] try to prepare you guys like in freshman orientation you watch the ‘Run, Hide, Fight’ video. The difference between high school and college is that we give you the choice to protect yourself and your classmates the best way you know how. If you can get out and go, then go. If someone has the ability to stop a person, then stop them.”
Kendall Pope can be contacted at kpope@kscequinox.com