Brown University is considering equipping its police force with firearms following a recent surge in campus crimes, though some students are concerned that the guns will create more problems than they solve.
The debate over whether to arm the Brown University Police -- who are trained at the same academy as most other Rhode Island police officers -- arose in response to statistics showing a 400 percent increase in on-campus robberies from fall 2000 to fall 2001.
"There are a number of students and staff who are not happy with the level of service that they are receiving right now," said Col. Paul Verrecchia, chief of police and security services at Brown.
Verrecchia explained that the Brown police force currently operates under a "disengagement policy." The policy protects the safety of unarmed officers by preventing them from being the first to respond in situations where a weapon is involved or suspected.
"What's the point of having police officers who can't respond when you need help the most?" Verrecchia questioned. "Right now, we can't intervene in these dangerous situations until Providence police have arrived and secured the scene."
Not all students agree that guns represent the best answer to the current crime wave.
"We should approach this issue with a lot of care because there are tangible negative effects," Brown senior Carl Takei said.
Takei said that the university has "no information on whether the presence of guns would be a deterrent to crime" and suggested that many students would feel intimidated when dealing with armed officers.
The question of whether the Brown Police should carry guns is not new. Over the past decade, the issue has arisen several times, most recently in 1995, when then-Brown President Bartan Gregorian decided that the university was not ready for the presence of an armed campus police.
Formed in 1973 to provide the college with a security presence better accustomed to dealing with students, Brown's police force can also respond to campus calls much more rapidly than Providence police.
Brown police officers, whose jurisdiction extends for some distance beyond university property, work alongside a separate security organization whose members will remain unarmed. This is comparable to the situation of Dartmouth's Safety and Security department.
Dartmouth remains one of the few Ivy League schools without a full-blown police force: Yale, Harvard and Princeton all have campus police, while other nearby non-Ivy institutions such as the University of Vermont, Tufts and the University of New Hampshire also employ trained police to complement on-campus security organizations.
The current drive to arm the Brown University Police has been led by the Undergraduate Council of Students, Brown's student government, which recently passed a resolution supporting a gun-carrying security force.
"We are prepared to address this extremely important issue and have done so," Council President Rodrick Echols said.
The resolution cited the "rising crime on campus" and the disengagement policy as problems which jeopardize the safety of Brown students and encouraged the university administration to provide for the armament of campus police.
But Takei thought that the university should only consider the use of guns once "every other possibility has been exhausted."
"I think what the university needs to do is look at a range of options," he said. Takei mentioned using non-lethal weapons, increasing police patrols and improving lighting in crime-prone areas as potential alternatives.
Dartmouth students, meanwhile, are unlikely to see gun-toting Safety and Security officers appear anytime soon.
"Safety and Security is very blessed to work with a cooperative community and student body and we feel that there's no need for firearms," Safety and Security Sgt. Lauren Cummings '72 said.
He explained that the department's 38 officers often work cooperatively with the Hanover Police, but said that the addition of guns is an unnecessary step that would "create an image that we really don't want to have."
Although Brown's police remain unarmed for the time being, some sort of proposal to change to the current system is likely to come before the university in the near future.
"My sense is that there will be some type of change," Verrecchia said, "but exactly what that change will be it's too soon to tell."
