Spring Break
Letter: Student offers compromises to state BOG in case of arming URI police
Issue date: 3/25/09 Section: Editorial/Opinion
03/25/09 - To the Cigar,
I feel that after personally considering and discussing the issue of arming campus police in class, I must chime in on the debate.
Clearly, this is a controversial issue because both sides of the debate have good reasons to support their opinions. If I were a campus police officer and received a call about a potentially violent situation, I would surely want a weapon to protect myself. After all, URI police undergo the same training in a police academy as any other city police officer. In fact, many are R.I. city cops that work part-time as URI police.
My main problem is the nature of the debate itself. From all I have read, it seems that we are arguing about this issue on a black-and-white spectrum. It is much more complicated than simply arming URI police or not.
What if we have the weapons only available in the main police headquarters? Or we arm them with non-deadly weapons? Probably the first weapon that comes to mind is the taser (cue our memories of the University of Florida's infamous "Don't Tase Me Bro!" incident).
Unfortunately, the roughly 180 deaths from police use of tasers has lead the U.S. Department of Justice to review the use of tasers in 2006 and lead Amnesty International to call for a suspension on their use.
Because of these types of incidents, many experts has coined terms such as less-deadly weapons rather than non-deadly weapons. There are a whole host of other less-deadly weapons that URI police could employ both to protect themselves and the student population. To name a few, URI police could use rubber, wax, or plastic bullets, bean bag rounds, mace, and paintball pepper-spray projectiles.
Unfortunately, none of these options are without the risk of being lethal. But I believe we must do something to protect URI from a worst case scenario like the Virginia-Tech massacre.
Let us say URI police are allowed to carry lethal or non-lethal weapons, but only at their main campus headquarters. In the worst-case scenario, someone reports a school shooting at URI. Police would be equipped to protect us, but how many minutes would it take them to retrieve the weapons and drive to the location of the assailant? Or for South Kingston police to arrive on the scene?
I feel that after personally considering and discussing the issue of arming campus police in class, I must chime in on the debate.
Clearly, this is a controversial issue because both sides of the debate have good reasons to support their opinions. If I were a campus police officer and received a call about a potentially violent situation, I would surely want a weapon to protect myself. After all, URI police undergo the same training in a police academy as any other city police officer. In fact, many are R.I. city cops that work part-time as URI police.
My main problem is the nature of the debate itself. From all I have read, it seems that we are arguing about this issue on a black-and-white spectrum. It is much more complicated than simply arming URI police or not.
What if we have the weapons only available in the main police headquarters? Or we arm them with non-deadly weapons? Probably the first weapon that comes to mind is the taser (cue our memories of the University of Florida's infamous "Don't Tase Me Bro!" incident).
Unfortunately, the roughly 180 deaths from police use of tasers has lead the U.S. Department of Justice to review the use of tasers in 2006 and lead Amnesty International to call for a suspension on their use.
Because of these types of incidents, many experts has coined terms such as less-deadly weapons rather than non-deadly weapons. There are a whole host of other less-deadly weapons that URI police could employ both to protect themselves and the student population. To name a few, URI police could use rubber, wax, or plastic bullets, bean bag rounds, mace, and paintball pepper-spray projectiles.
Unfortunately, none of these options are without the risk of being lethal. But I believe we must do something to protect URI from a worst case scenario like the Virginia-Tech massacre.
Let us say URI police are allowed to carry lethal or non-lethal weapons, but only at their main campus headquarters. In the worst-case scenario, someone reports a school shooting at URI. Police would be equipped to protect us, but how many minutes would it take them to retrieve the weapons and drive to the location of the assailant? Or for South Kingston police to arrive on the scene?
