Three members of the University of Oregon Police Department presented a number of points as to why arming officers would benefit the UO during the ASUO Senate meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 13. UOPD spokesperson Kelly McIver, interim Chief of Police Carolyn McDermed and Police Captain Pete Deshpande were present at the meeting and spoke about the department’s overall goals and possible outcomes if officers were given the ability to be armed.

McIver started the UOPD section of the senate meeting by highlighting that the department’s transition from DPS officially started Jan. 1 of 2012 and that in order for the officers to provide better services to the UO, they need to be armed. He pointed out that the officers who work for the school also receive the same training as any other officer in the state of Oregon.

“We want to clear up that this is a real police department with real police officers,” McIver said.

McIver also pointed out that because students are already paying for their education, they deserve to be fully protected by an armed police department.

“You’re paying a boatload of money for this … I think it’s important for you to have a say in how things are handled,” said McIver. “With that being said, this is a very complicated issue.”

During the meeting, senators requested that McDermed and Deshpande speak, too, and voice their beliefs on the matter. Senator Lamar Wise went as far to say that he didn’t fully understand, and McDermed replied with an invitation to chat over coffee.

In an earlier interview, McDermed stated that the biggest benefit that comes from arming officers is the fact that they will be able to serve the UO better in general, not just with safety, but also due to the fact that officers will be able to follow up with suspects without the fear of putting their lives at risk.

“Right now, our police officers are limited by what they can do because they are not armed,” McDermed said. “And a lot of them are around safety issues, but not just that. There’s always the critical incident; workplace violence, active shooters, where response time is extremely important. The faster you can respond and stop the shooter, the less people die and more lives are saved … Investigations right now, because we are not armed, we can’t go off campus and contact suspects. We can’t serve arrests or search warrants, or anything where there might be inherent danger in contacting the unknown … Mutual aid is another one, if there was an active shooter on campus, we would call in other agencies to assist us, we can’t reciprocate, so we could never provide mutual aid to Eugene or Springfield or any of our surrounding agencies because we aren’t similarly equipped.”

Also in an earlier interview, Deshpande pointed out that simply having a sidearm limits the actions of some criminals simply seeing that an officer is armed and creates a deterrence effect.

“When certain criminals see that we have armed police on campus, that alone may prevent them from acting out, hurting others, hurting the officers and so forth,” Deshpande said.

Deshpande also specified that officers, because they are not armed, cannot transport arrested suspects, because of unknown danger when dealing with criminals.

“We don’t transport people to jail, which sounds like such a simple thing, but again the industry norm suggests that we need to be fully equipped … so we have to call Eugene (Police) to do that,” Deshpande said, “and often times they’re backed up and they can’t get here for extended periods of time, and in one case recently they weren’t able to respond at all.”

In the same interview, McIver touched on the fact that having a police department on campus with armed officers would reward the UO as a whole.

“We want the university to get more value out of having a police department,” McIver said. ”… If we don’t do that, and the president chooses not to seek authority to arm or the state board decides to reject that request, then UOPD would still do our jobs to the best of our abilities, but we would be in a position of not being able to serve campus fully and we would have to have Eugene police (carry guns onto campus). And we’d have to be at the mercy of their priorities and their resources and time. Essentially, it is a matter of believing that we can provide that better service if we are better equipped.”