Three years after The Harvard Crimson lost a lawsuit to the Harvard University Police Department that would have made all HUPD reports public records, the newspaper is backing a bill requiring state special police forces — including campus police departments — to make all reports available to all.

Crimson president William Marra said the lawsuit was filed in the name of freedom of speech.

“The Harvard University Police Department, among other university police forces, is endowed with the power of public police forces, including the power to arrest, but today does not comply with the rules of public reporting that bind public police forces,” Marra said in an email.

Marra said he lobbied for the bill in the Statehouse several times and spoke with the bill’s sponsor Sen. Jarrett Barrios (D-Cambridge).

He called the bill a “matter of pressing importance” for students to have knowledge about the safety of their campus.

“Without full knowledge of assaults and crime rates, students cannot know the specific nature of the threats they face, and this makes it harder for them to protect themselves against criminals in the area,” Marra said.

In addition to the university crime logs — already available to the public — which record the dates, times and brief descriptions of incident reports, the new official police report would provide a detailed account of every incident to which the police department responds.

Although the HUPD does not release crime reports, most Boston-area schools already do voluntarily, including Boston University and the BU Police Department.

James Ferrier, Northeastern University’s associate director of Public Safety, holds weekly press conferences with Northeastern students to discuss crimes that have been committed during the week.

Ferrier said that because Northeastern officials already make their police reports public, the proposed legislation will not significantly affect the university.

“You could count on one hand, literally, the number of times in the last 25 years that a member of the media or a private individual has asked to see a police report,” Ferrier said.

Ferrier added that the bill will not make a considerable amount of information available that could not already be found in crime logs because names and other vital information are blacked out before a police report is released.

Ferrier said he fears campus newspapers may have ulterior motives in supporting this bill.

“There are some campus media who got nosy and wanted to know other details about crimes that they couldn’t get through the log. If a crime occurred on campus, news about it will spread like wildfire. If there was a crime and it was reported to the police, it is in the crime log,” Ferrier said.

Sara Wunsch, a staff attorney for the ACLU, which supported the Crimson’s 2003 lawsuit, said university police forces should be more forthcoming with information.

“The police powers are too great to leave their activities from scrutiny from the public,” said Wunsch. “We became involved because access to this information is related to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press. We care about police records in particular because we’re concerned about issues like racial profiling and police misconduct.”

A Senate vote was postponed for the second time on Feb. 15, but Marra said a new vote is scheduled for March 15.