The Department of Public Safety is in dire and immediate need of an overhaul here on our campus.
By overhaul we don’t mean slight modification, or incremental improvement. It needs to be completely transformed – and soon, if President Dave Frohnmayer and DPS Director Kevin Williams want to persuade anyone they are committed to serving and protecting the students here at our University.
Training for DPS officers on campus lies somewhere between “inadequate” and “nonexistent.” Oregon state law does not set any explicit requirements for officer training – it merely stipulates there be some form of it. Responsibility for actually training officers, then, lies with Department of Public Safety Standards and Training, or DPSST.
Where they were supposed to design a policy that would train new officers for the job, they’ve instead done next to nothing, leaving Williams the responsibility for fixing a problem he had no part in creating.
Technically speaking, there is a training program currently in place – a six-week course to bring officers up to speed. But apparently DPSST was too busy to offer such a class in either 2005 or 2006. Furthermore, what training is offered leaves new DPS officers grossly unprepared for situations in which mental health plays a role. On a college campus in particular, where many students deal with mental conditions and substance abuse issues, this kind of preparation is crucial.
Officers who want adequate training must either appeal to DPSST or pay for outside training themselves. This is simply unacceptable. That officers are at the mercy of the state when it comes to job readiness is as backwards logically as it’s deplorable ethically. Training for DPS officers on our campus must improve.
Fortunately the public is aware of the situation, which should serve as an opportunity for DPS to raise its training standards.
Several ideas have been kicked around, chief among them being the creation of a University police department, where DPS officers take the same training and carry the same equipment – including guns – as city police officers. We oppose this idea, mainly on the grounds that the University doesn’t have nearly the kinds of extra funds necessary for such a drastic overhaul. No, the short- and long-term solutions alike lie under DPS’s current structure, and are dependent upon greater assistance from the state.
Before Frohnmayer and Williams can really call DPS officers trained for the job, these administrative changes must be made: A regular training program must be put in place. It should be a joint effort by the state legislature and DPSST. It should be modeled after the 16-week course offered to city officers. A section of the program should deal specifically with mental health-related issues on campus. And it should be implemented immediately – unless it’s decided, of course, that our safety can wait a while.