Opinion: Mistrust in local law enforcement has dangerous implications for everyone.
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The increasingly aggressive police presence in Eugene has made one thing clear on our campus: we can’t trust the Eugene Police Department. Targeting illegal alcohol use, noise ordinance violations and unruly gatherings in neighborhood areas surrounding the university, police officers are issuing dozens of citations and arrests each weekend.
This recent rise in citations has opened the floodgates for students’ personal — and often negative — encounters with the Eugene PD. Stories and videos are circulating of officers verbally and even physically abusing students. One video shows an officer forcefully yanking a student on to the ground, picking another up and throwing them and yelling intimidatingly.
This police response to weekend party-goers is an extreme and essentially futile effort — besides maybe for officers who receive paid compensation for each citation. In my opinion, increasing citations is a largely hypocritical and ineffective way to address student drinking culture.
The hypocrisy of charging students with noise ordinance violations seems to be lost on Eugene PD. I, too, am admittedly left with more questions than answers. Why is it acceptable for students to party on campus with ESPN, but when students do it in their own homes, it’s policed immediately? And how do construction companies bypass noise ordinance laws all year long, yet when students play music on weekends, it’s suddenly illegal?
While this behavior is frightening, it is disingenuous for me to claim to know what fear of police feels like. As a white woman, privilege protects me from the violence experienced by people of color across our country at the hands of police officers. Without comparing or equating student mistrust of “party patrol” to the profound trauma felt primarily by Black communities who are targeted by police, I want to acknowledge this larger, more fundamental problem and include it in the conversation.
The disproportionate number of citations, arrests and acts of police brutality reveal a clear and heavy entrenchment of racist values within the police force, and by extension, the pillars of American society. This abuse of power is a violation of civil liberties. It is a grave injustice that has taken innocent lives, traumatized families and broken institutional bonds. It must be acknowledged, felt and stopped. The police force must be deeply examined and reimagined at every level.
Even at a local level we can see how officers misuse positions of authority to intimidate students in our community. Students have been yelled at, manhandled, and “treated like crap.” On this smaller scale, our own relationship with local police becomes one based on hostility and mistrust.
People need local law enforcement they can trust. When they can’t, it must be recognized and called out on an organized level. At the Eugene City Council Meeting on Nov. 14, Oregon students did just that. ASUO Executive Staff Member Meghan Turley has worked closely with organizing these efforts, and the ASUO Instagram page said EPD’s recent behavior set “an alarming precedent for community safety.”
Campus safety is a valid concern, but the perpetrators are less often intoxicated students than they are the armed suspects seen at the university nearly every month. Perhaps Eugene and Campus Police could refocus their safety efforts here and protect students from weapon-bearing threats.
Of course, the safety of intoxicated students is also of great importance. I understand that Minor in Possession charges are meant to discourage students from participating in a possibly unsafe and illegal drinking culture. Despite these efforts, even Eugene PD Police Chief Chris Skinner acknowledges that “there’s going to be underage drinking; as much as we can debate whether that’s good or bad, or just a part of the culture, we know that that’s going to happen.”
Perhaps if we’ve come to accept that these increased citations are not derailing underage drinkers, then maybe there are more effective ways to address student drinking culture. Focusing on teaching students how to care for themselves and their friends while drinking, discouraging peer pressure and hazing on campus and giving students authority figures they can trust to help them rather than persecute them seems like a better solution.
The university’s Division of Student Life page gives several important tips on dealing with alcohol poisoning or helping a friend struggling with alcohol or drug use, but an interactive prevention program could be more effective. Currently, first-year students must attend and pass an online drug and alcohol safety course, which proves an easy task.
“I learned nothing from it,” Bethany Kepner, a senior who worked as Student Orientation Stafferthis summer, said. “From my perspective, most freshmen just did it because they had to.”
Most students seemingly reject this course, choosing not to engage in the way the university may hope. I believe this is more a by-product of the course’s design — it is quickly finished and students can easily lie about the amount they drink or use drugs. Perhaps further instruction and outreach focusing on students’ relationship with alcohol would better address the harmful aspects of drinking culture.
Instead, university administrators watch as students are jailed for living in houses that host “unruly parties” and have personal belongings, like laptops, confiscated from them. This is not a common procedure, and it will not change the fact that students are going to drink and go out on weekends. Instead, it sends a message to Oregon students that we cannot trust our local police department. The implications of this are vast — students may not feel safe asking police for help in dire situations, police may continue to abuse their authority to worsening degrees, and people may respond to police with increasing hostility despite repercussions.
Building back this student and police trust in Eugene will take efforts from the department that I don’t see happening. It would mean increasing transparency and holding officers who exhibit aggressive or violent behavior accountable. It would mean working with the university, campus police and local outreach programs to ensure more effective measures are taken to address student safety concerns and student drinking culture. Above all, it would mean ending this over-policing seen across campus neighborhoods nearly every weekend, and apologizing for instilling this fear and mistrust in the students they are meant to serve.
