On any given day at the University of Oregon, there’s a green and white squad car sitting outside the Erb Memorial Union. If some UO activists succeed in their campaign to dismantle the University of Oregon Police Department, though, that car may not be there much longer.
The university established UOPD in 2012, but some campus groups believe it’s time to defund, disarm and dismantle campus police, following nationwide protests against police brutality.
Portland State University announced it would disarm its police department beginning fall 2020 on August 13, OPB reported. Other student bodies, including those at Yale and University of California, Berkeley, are lobbying for their universities to disband campus police.
One petition calls for UO and UO President Michael Schill to defund UOPD, investing in Black lives. The petition currently has more than 1,900 signatures.
DisarmUO, a campus-based activist group, released a list of demands on Instagram on August 11. The demands included disarming UOPD, releasing complaints made against campus police and defunding the department, redirecting funds towards other programs.
“Our movement of disarming, defunding and dismantling UOPD is ultimately about imagining a better future for students and community members alike,” DisarmUO said in a statement, “a future that actually makes us feel safe and welcome on campus and in Eugene.”
Both DisarmUO and ReclaimUO, another campus-based activist group, posted “A Critical History of the University of Oregon Police Department” on Instagram. Patrick Schranck, a ReclaimUO member, created the report, after becoming curious about UOPD’s history.
Schranck’s report covered the road leading up to UOPD’s creation, as well as the department’s controversies.
A 2014 lawsuit between UOPD and James Cleavenger, a former UOPD officer and former Lane County district attorney candidate, brought to light a scandal in which officers had compiled a list of individuals on campus whom they believed should “eat a bowl of dicks,” according to previous Emerald reporting. UOPD Chief Matthew Carmichael had not yet joined campus police.
Schranck called the list UOPD’s most egregious incident. “I think a lot of students just, in general, don’t pay too close attention to their day-to-day operations,” Schranck said concerning UOPD. “Not only because they’re more busy with their lives, but also people aren’t talking about it. It’s kind of a cyclical issue. It feeds into itself.”
Ricardo Friaz, chair of the graduate student union’s BIPOC Caucus, said he would rather hear an apology from UOPD’s employers — the University of Oregon.
“An apology means nothing compared to the immediate disarmament of UOPD and the defunding of UOPD,” DisarmUO said in a statement. “It’s not about pinning blame on one individual for an issue that is deeply systemic, because one person giving an apology ultimately does not change the system.”
Carmichael apologized for any police officer that made other U.S. law enforcement officers’ jobs more difficult and dangerous by breaking trust. “Shame on them,” he said.
UOPD made 192 arrests and citations last school year, according to a UO statement, including 38 violent criminal charges. Campus police arrested 56 individuals with active warrants. Twenty-eight had “serious violent behavior” in their criminal histories, UO stated.
“These arrests and this level of security would not be possible with unarmed officers,” the university stated.
According to UO’s statement, there is a “proven need for the UO to employ a sworn and armed law enforcement agency” and the university is in the process of revising UOPD’s policy manual “to make guidance and restrictions unmistakably clear.”
Both Schranck and Friaz support returning to an unarmed security detail and hope UO will disband UOPD.
Friaz stressed the importance of moving money away from campus police. “I think the first step is money because that’s a material actual change,” Friaz said.
Carmichael said UOPD could function if UO reduced its budget, but doing so would amount to a service reduction.
For the fiscal year 2021, UOPD’s total expense budget is $7,440,946, according to budget data provided by the department. In FY20, it was $7,600,087; in FY19, $7,313,272; in FY18, $7,074,505.
Various budget shifts occurred over those four years, according to a UO spokesperson, including Safe Ride entering UOPD’s budget in 2018 and the department providing security at UO’s Portland campus beginning in 2019.
“I don’t think that students should settle for anything less than dismantling, only because if our goal is to make all of us safer, then the first step is dismantling,” Friaz said, the first step being “to actually get rid of what’s not working and what’s actively hurting us.” Schranck agreed.
While Carmichael disagreed with disarming and disbanding UOPD, he said he still respected the position. “It just reminds me that I’ve got to work harder,” he said, “and I’ve got to be better.”
Regarding Carmichael, Schranck said, “resign.”
The University of Oregon Police Department, formerly the Department of Public Safety, was established in 2012. Now, campus-based activist groups are calling for the disarming, defunding, and dismantling of UOPD. Campus-based activist groups across the country call for disarming and defunding their university police departments. Some groups at the University of Oregon have recently made these same demands. (Summer Surgent-Gough/Emerald)