Part 7: What are some alternatives to the BUPD?
There are two parts to this proposal: abolish the Boston University Police Department, and replace it.
The “replace” part often gets lost in mud. Abolishing the BUPD does not mean abolishing all University services and leaving it at that. Abolishing the BUPD requires that we create and fund more effective alternatives.
For instance, in many shootings of unarmed students by campus police, the student was intoxicated. To prevent this kind of unnecessary violence and murder, why not create a task force of mental health professionals dedicated to dealing with intoxicated students? This group could be on call 24/7 for substance abuse advice as well as free transportation.
Mental health professionals have been proven to be better-trained at dealing with dangerous situations than police officers. Creating a task force of individuals dedicated to de-escalating violent situations would offer safer alternatives to calling the police.
Several survivors of sexual assault have expressed that BU’s Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Center served as a better and more equipt resource than BUPD and the administration. If programs such as these had more funding, they could better aid and support survivors, as well as offer viable pathways for justice.
We could also put funding into expanding Scarlet SafeWalk, the escort service not operated by the BUPD. Anyone feeling unsafe on campus can call a hotline number between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. and be escorted from one campus location to another.
I cannot emphasize enough how effective these programs could be. Picture yourself walking home alone at night after a party. You’re drunk, but are underage, so you don’t feel comfortable calling the cops. If you have the option to call a free transportation service to drive you home and make sure you’re well, wouldn’t you take that in a heartbeat? Wouldn’t that make you feel safe?
But what about petty theft, you may ask. Who is going to recover my iPhone after I leave it unattended on a library table?
From speaking to a wide variety of students, it seems that stolen items are often not recovered by the BUPD. With all the extra money we’ll have by not employing violence actors to patrol our campus, we could afford to install more security cameras in places where petty theft is common.
The only situation where other students and I found that campus police would perhaps be the best-equipped responder is an active shooter situation.
But even this perceived benefit of campus police has a huge problem.
In the 2018 Parkland, Fla. shooting, the school’s police officer chose to hide instead of intervening. And unfortunately, he had every legal right to do so.
According to the U.S. Supreme Court, police agencies are under no obligation to protect citizens, as seen in the DeShaney v. Winnebago and Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales cases.
A Mises Institute article quotes Professor Darren Hutchinson of the University of Florida School of Law: “Neither the Constitution, nor state law, impose a general duty upon police officers or other governmental officials to protect individual persons from harm — even when they know the harm will occur. Police can watch someone attack you, refuse to intervene and not violate the Constitution.”
Boston University eerily echoed this sentiment in a recent court case. In 2015, a student at BU was assaulted in her dorm. She sued the school under the means that she felt a false sense of security, and in a court filing that included a section entitled “The University Made No Definite Or Certain Promise To Keep Students Safe,” BU defended itself by claiming she could have locked her door.
The University Made No Definite Or Certain Promise To Keep Students Safe.
So if police officers themselves are under no legal obligation to keep students safe, and the University itself made no definite or certain promise to keep students safe, why on Earth are we paying millions of dollars for a campus police department?
Who is keeping us safe?
Why allow BUPD to continue to harass and intimidate students of color by their mere presence on campus when they are under no obligation to actually protect any of us?
More importantly, why allow BUPD to harass and intimidate students of color, full stop?
BUPD’s many inadequacies and shortcomings can no longer be hidden — they are coming into light.
Students across campus have expressed how BUPD is woefully unequipped to deal with students issues.
“They are N O T well-equipped to deal with petty things and practically children,” Sarah Lopez, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, wrote in an Instagram direct message.
“What we need is better funding for mental health, substance abuse counselors, and better equipped social workers. [BUPD] aren’t even effective at what they’re supposed to do which is usually dealing with theft.
Has anyone actually ever gotten their stuff back?? Is the person ever caught? If they are, punishment is obviously not effective [because] it keeps happening. Guess what doesn’t stop crime at a fast enough rate? Jail. Guess what does? Addressing the root of the problem behind theft often mental health and lack of access to adequate resources.
At the heart of the matter, it does not matter IT. DOES. NOT. MATTER. ABOUT. THE. POLICE. FORCE. what matters is that we prefer punishment instead of rehab and finding the root of the problem. What matters is that the important resources are direly underfunded.”
There are plenty of alternatives to policing that simply make more sense.
As organizer Mariame Kaba wrote in The New York Times, “We can build other ways of responding to harms in our society. Trained ‘community care workers’ could do mental-health checks if someone needs help. Towns could use restorative-justice models instead of throwing people in prison.”
If we abolish the BUPD, we would have close to $6 million in the budget to build these meaningful alternatives. BU is supposed to be a site of innovation — let’s live up to that promise.
