4/9/2012: From a lawsuit filed in federal court, asking for $10,000 in damages from UO after DPS stopped 2 people riding bikes without lights. (PSO is “public safety officer”):
I have a great deal of respect for UO’s public safety officers, who regularly deal with bad actors like this with a lot more grace than I could. However I have never heard of a single UO campus incident where a Glock .45 on the belt would have necessarily helped matters, and it’s easy to picture many, many situations where armed police are likely to make things worse – e.g. some distraught student trying”suicide by cop”.
Update: A commenter notes
Might have helped in this incident: http://dailyemerald.com/2007/05/14/two-dps-officers-recognized-for-selfless-service/
So a student will only suicide by cop with campus police not armed city police? Lots of armed city police in the west university area on weekends and that has not happened yet. Why don’t you put the stick down UO Matters, the horse is beyond dead
If I just had a tazer, I’m sure I could get it moving again.
Might have helped in this incident: http://dailyemerald.com/2007/05/14/two-dps-officers-recognized-for-selfless-service/
These two Officers were almost killed.
A Taser would not revive a dead animal, though it was a cute thought.
or maybe it wouldn’t have, and the perp could have taken the gun and used it on the officers. he clearly wasn’t sane, as shown by attacking two officers without any kind of weapon or motivation.
so it could have been worse. you know, as long as we’re considering hypotheticals and all.
You seem to insinuate here that it is OK for the dps guys to get stabbed by a sword and that it is equally OK for suicidal students to shoot at the officers (That is usually how suicide by cops goes) as long as you never hear or have heard about it.
I doubt very seriously that you have any respect for them as you say. Easy to see why the general public holds professors and and the general PERS collecting staff at the UO in such low regard.