Their RG Op-Ed is here:
The brand-new University of Oregon Police Department can expect high-profile incidents in which the campus police will use force — it is part of the job, and it is only a matter of time. The UOPD doesn’t have an oversight system that meets the standards already voted on by the community.
All too true. The conversion from a UO Public Safety Department to a sworn and armed UO Police Department has been botched in every way possible.
I know JCV (one of the authors) to be a very earnest individual. I think this letter/editorial is quite important and clearly shows that the UOPD does sit in a broader context and has accountability to that broader context. I suggest that one of the very first things that our new lawyer PREZ does, is to review all of this and to make sure that the UOPD corrects mistakes cited in that letter. He should even hire JCV as a consultant on this.
The UO does NOT live in its own universe.
As UOM rightly points out, many of these concerns were raised years ago [in the FAC when I last served on it] and were dismissed by JH. The case of the UOPD is but another example whereby faculty input was sensible and constructive, and unfortunately discounted. There are far too many such examples, and they all seem to reflect a pervasive attitude in JH that admins are ‘enlightened’ and know better. Given such a perception is there much hope for the UO? It would be very constructive for the new prez to consider how pervasive this problem is and what might be done to reverse it.
I like the last bit of your comment there dead duck
…’reverse it’.
Let’s reverse the uopd. Undo what never should have happened in the first place. Faculty didn’t want it. Staff didn’t want it. Students didn’t want it. Let’s undo this & their mind boggling budget.
Yep, and yep. I can remember sitting in a Senate meeting in 150 Columbia as faculty carefully and patiently tore apart the so-called financial forecasts for the Matthew Knight Arena. Those faculty were dead on — it was a boondoggle.
And don’t get me started on those of us who called out the absurd revenue forecasts for the UO Portland programs in the White Stag building.
The public safety advisory group was supposed to have much input on this and the forming of the police department. the group was brushed off. I do not believe a word coming out of the UofO police talking head:
But UO PD Public Information Officer Kelly McIver says the department does have a complaint resolution committee made up of a mix of folks from the community.
“People from the student population, people from the classified staff, people from the administrative world, people from the faculty,” said McIver.
He says it isn’t fair to compare the two very different departments.
“We don’t have the same number and type of interactions that a municiple department would,” said McIver.
“My experience is that the university is essentially pretending that that oversight mechanism exists,” said Thomas Tullis, UO student.
Tullis says he was arrested his freshman year and tried to file a complaint against University of Oregon Police but didn’t get anywhere.
He says he emailed to get a copy of a complaint form — got a response from UO PD five days later with a link.
“Using Google’s web archive, I discovered that when I had sent my email, I hadn’t missed anything. That form didn’t exist,” said Tullis.
“We hadn’t quite gotten that ready for being posted on the website yet and then we provided that to this person in advance of it actually being publically posted online so they could make use of it,” said McIver.
http://www.kezi.com/news/Op-Ed_Piece_Cites_a_Lack_of_Oversight_within_UO_Police_Department.html