11/12/2011: There are all sorts of conspiracy theories floating around campus as to why Frances Dyke would double UO spending on DPS, then get Floyd Prozanski to convince the legislature to grant them authority as sworn police officers. I figured this was about money – Doug Tripp gets a raise, bunch of new administrative slots, and the sworn officers get a sweeter PERS deal. The usual everyday petty UO corruption.
But in the wake of Penn State, this sort of thinking is not paranoid or cynical enough. Jack Bogdanski points to this NYT article on how the Penn State campus police were able to hide Coach Sandusky’s child raping – and gives many, many other examples from around the country of how campus police have used their authority to arrest – or more specifically choose to not arrest – to hide a variety of misdeeds, including many horrific ones. Most of the examples involve student-athletes.
Chilling. And the efforts to develop effective independent oversight for the new UO Police seem totally stalled – by VPFA Dyke. Unacceptable. President Lariviere should end this effort and go back to the old DPS model, where arrests are handled by the Eugene Police Department, who have oversight procedures and whose chief is responsible to an elected city government.
UOM might want to look at the City of Eugene’s Organizational Chart. The EPD chief reports to the city manager, not the elected representatives on the city council.
The City’s independent police auditor reports to the city council. Which UOM may recall involved quite a fight to have that reporting relationship instead of reporting to the city manager.
AFAIK, the city council has no authority to fire the EPD chief, which is unfortunate.
You’re not thinking of the upside, UOMatters. When you catch the campus police covering up athletes’ crimes, maybe you can get the VPFA and AD indicted!
Note also the brutal way the University of California police responded to the students’ “occupy” protest in Berkeley. Officers can’t keep a campus safe if students hate and fear them. DPS officers are at the very least tolerated. A police force would not be.
“Which one of you has the pot?”
“We smoked it all.”
No mandatory drug testing? No police in Oregon are going to hold UO athletes accountable for their actions.
I love conspiracy theories as much as the next person, but for their entertainment, not explanatory, value. I don’t, however, see any conspiracy here.
In Sen. Prozanski’s day job, he is a municipal prosecutor who works with Eugene City Police everyday. He knows that Eugene’s hardest hit neighborhood for property crime is just west of campus where many students and faculty live. Prozanski believes that more police in this campus neighborhood will mean better protection for property owners and residents from theft and vandalism.
But who will pay for these additional cops? Not the Eugene city government. It’s not so much that Eugene believes this high-crime area is a University-created problem, or a University responsibility. Rather, Eugene believes that if the University can be persuaded to pay for policing the campus area, that shifts those costs from an understaffed city police to the relatively deep pockets of a primarily private and generously-funded institution.
How the UO administration chooses to respond to the door Prozanski opened may be full of inside-UO empire-building and incompetence. One might even wonder why Sen. Prozanski, who professes no great confidence in the University’s current policing (“Over the years I’ve worked with them and have not been, let’s say, ‘impressed” with the perspective of it based on the lack of resources and… training.”) would entrust these same folks with loaded guns.
But, when it comes right down it, it’s about leveraging mostly private dollars to police a campus ghetto that Eugene taxpayers no longer want to finance.
It seems to me by actually reading the article. The problem is NOT the police but the Administration. Here at the glorious UO most Administrators are on 1-year contracts. Which means no one wants to stick their necks out or make the tough/ unpopular decisions because their job can be gone without cause and about 1 month notice. This is the problem, every has their proverbial “balls” in a vise, being twisted by the one of signs the contracts.
“The Penn State police did investigate a complaint in 1998 about Jerry Sandusky, the former assistant coach who was charged last week with sexually abusing eight boys, and turned it over to the district attorney, who declined to prosecute.” The Police did their job, but the DA did not prosecute, maybe due to lack of evidence of in Oregon indictment by a Grand Jury.
“But many serious offenses reach neither campus police officers nor their off-campus counterparts because they are directly funneled to administrators.” Sometimes the police don’t even get a chance to do their jobs.
“After the body of an Eastern Michigan University freshman was found in her dorm room in December 2006, naked from the waist down with a pillow over her head, the chief of the university police said there was “no reason to suspect foul play,” and let her parents believe she had died of natural causes.” This guy is a corrupt POS who doesn’t deserve to wear a badge, I have a feeling this was not his decision but some Administrator trying to protect the schools “Image.” Probably on a one-year contract….
“A student raped in her dorm room in 2004 learned that the accused football player had been expelled from a summer program for threatening, grabbing and sexually harassing several women on campus. He had been readmitted within weeks at the insistence of his coach.” Put me in coach I can want to rape women!! Don’t see how the ASU PD is responsible for this one.
“Marquette is under investigation by the Education Department for possible violations of the Clery Act, apparently in connection with a case in which four athletes accused of sexual assault were said to have met with the coaching staff to discuss the episode before they were interviewed by campus police. And according to the local district attorney, the campus police never told local law enforcement or prosecutors about the case, or about a second sexual assault complaint against another athlete five months later.” Sounds like the coach did a little extra coaching to get their stories straight. Marquette is a private university, and can circle the wagons much tighter. This still should have been presented to a grand jury, and someone in the PD failed to push this to the next level. When in doubt pass the buck to the next level, local PD, state police, or district attorney.
“After state and federal investigations, both schools promised to overhaul their policies, and Dominican paid New York State $20,000 for under-reporting crime. “There exists a culture of entitlement for athletes or teams,” Ms. Kiss said. “I’m certain it’s a culture that doesn’t only exist at Penn State.” Certainly the UO doesn’t have this problem, they have their special study box and lil’Cliff smoked it all, kept driving, and wasn’t impaired, yeah RIGHT
Let us not forget that the disgusting scandals surrounding the Washington football team were abetted by the actual police and district attorneys, who chose to look the other way again and again even after accusations of drug deals, shootings, and rapes.
Well maybe they should research and find out why the security personnel both assaulted a young man and emptied two bottles of pepper spray on him WHILE IN HANDCUFFS at the USC- Ducks game…..they never even identified themselves as security.