When Department of Public Safety officers got a tip late one night last spring that students in the Living Learning Center had guns, they couldn’t go investigate – they had to wait for officers from the Eugene Police Department to go in first.
That’s because DPS is prohibited by Oregon law from being armed with guns or designated as official police officers, leaving the University to rely on EPD to handle more serious situations.
But the number of sworn EPD officers that cover the University campus – three officers and one sergeant – is drastically lower than other Pacific-10 Conference schools. Most colleges outside of Oregon own their own police departments, which allows places like UCLA and the University of Washington to employ more than 50 sworn officers.
In April 2007, the Magellan Research Corp. highlighted drastic understaffing problems inside EPD, and suggested that part of the staffing issue is the University’s fault – it pays for only four officers to patrol the more than 20,000 students it draws to the city and the roughly 280 acres of campus grounds.
“The University is bearing less than their full share of their public safety responsibility,” the report says. The University pays EPD roughly $570,000 annually for officers to patrol the area. The money covers officer salaries and portions of vehicle and equipment costs.
Even though there are 14 DPS officers and four with EPD, it still doesn’t add up to adequate campus coverage. Only one of the four officers typically patrols at a time, and vacations and sick days mean some hours of the day go uncovered by police.
“With only three police officers assigned to the campus we don’t have police coverage 24/7,” DPS Director Kevin Williams said. “I believe we should have police coverage 24 hours a day, seven days per week.”
Making a UO police department
The Magellan study suggests that “EPD administrators discuss these issues with University of Oregon officials and seek a more equitable relationship.”
Terry Smith, an EPD analyst, said Eugene Police Chief Robert Lehner has been working with University administration, but Lehner is out of the office for two weeks and was unavailable for comment.
Frances Dyke, vice president for finance and administration at the University, said “things have changed significantly” since the report was filed in April, including the hiring of DPS Director Kevin Williams.
Dyke said the University is hoping to gain legislative approval to create an official police department on campus.
“We’re not shy about saying that’s in our best interest,” she said.
The University can’t simply pay EPD to provide more officers to cover campus because “they don’t have enough,” Dyke said, and the University is on a limited budget.
But the administration is making changes. “There is increased awareness of campus public safety since the Virginia Tech incident,” she said.
Even still, more police officers wouldn’t necessarily help stop a situation such as the shooting at Virginia Tech, EPD analyst Smith said.
Most of the killings at Virginia Tech occurred in about eight minutes, which was too quick for additional officers to have an impact.
“The size of the campus team doesn’t have an impact on incidents such as Virginia Tech,” Smith said. “It affects far more mundane things: traffic enforcement, auto theft, burglary, assaults.”
Nevertheless, the situation becomes more complex if it is prolonged and EPD officers must be called from off campus.
“If something happened in a building, I’d rather have people who know the buildings,” Williams said. “We don’t have time for people to take time to figure out where to go.”
Williams hopes to conduct training for EPD officers to make them more efficient in responding to campus incidents.
Education vs. enforcement
The Magellan Research Corp., which analyzed EPD’s staffing troubles, reported that “we have never seen such a difficult and severely under-funded and under-staffed situation.”
Oregon schools are unique in that they are prohibited by law from having their own police departments that are separate from the city’s. The University of Oregon and Oregon State University are the only Pac-10 schools with departments of public safety.
Because of this, “the ability to investigate crimes is much lower and the chances of apprehending the culprit or a suspect is lower,” Smith said. “That also means there is a great deal less enforcement on students regarding their behavior.”
But for some students that’s a good thing.
University senior Phil Wood strongly opposes an increased police presence.
“I think having DPS is much better than increasing the (Eugene) police force,” he said. “It seems like they’re still looking for things to do rather than having too much to do.”
The thousands of students who live around campus draw countless party complaints from other residents, EPD officer Chris White said. Because officers can’t refuse service, they are drawn to the area. “We can’t ignore it because in the past we’ve ended up getting riots,” he said.
“You might think there’s a lot of cops in Eugene if you walk up Hilyard on a weekend,” he said. “But there’s no cops elsewhere.”
Wood says his encounters with DPS officers have been more educational than the ones with Eugene police, who he said are more confrontational.
During Wood’s freshman year, a DPS officer caught him in the Bean parking lot smoking marijuana, he said.
“DPS can handle things in a more educational way,” he said, adding that he never smoked on campus like that again. “The DPS officer shook me into reality. Every bad run in with EPD has just made me angry.”
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