What to do about cops on campus
What to do about cops on campus
A committee charged with reimagining campus safety has proposed some dramatic changes to the police department — but will any of it stick?
Last summer, hundreds of people gathered on the Pentacrest, for days, demanding an end to police violence, many demanding an end to policing itself.
The protesters made sure their grievances were front and center — the Old Capitol, the central node of campus, was emblazoned in spray paint with the names of people killed by police and slogans declaring that Black Lives Matter. And on June 3, a cohort of police departments, the UI police among them, used tear gas on peaceful protesters, as they chanted, “Don’t shoot.”
Now the university is trying to rethink campus safety, and wondering if there’s a better way to structure who responds to emergencies and how to hold our campus police accountable.
The university has proposed three distinct models that address various shortfalls identified in the current public safety structure.
The first would bring enhanced training and recruitment strategies to UIPD. The model proposes more effort to recruit a diverse and representative police force and increase police training in areas of anti-racism and implicit bias. It’s focused specifically on reforming UIPD, and would also include a wellness division that would respond to less serious calls for service.
The second is a more dramatic restructuring of how safety threats are addressed on campus. It proposes a collaborative effort between crisis response teams, metal health professionals, victim services, and trained peer mentors to respond to most calls for service on campus. UIPD would not patrol or be on campus at all unless requested, and would respond to more serious crimes. This model doesn’t come right out and say “defund,” but buried in the proposal is the idea for an oversight committee that will “critically analyze the amount of police involvement and debate funding changes.”
Lastly is the idea of an oversight committee, composed of members appointed to be representative of the student body and hold perspectives of communities traditionally harmed by police. The committee would assess past police practices and current operations, proposing policy changes and regularly producing reports for the department.
When it’s all said and done, some combination of these ideas will get submitted to President Harreld as a recommendation, and he will ultimately have the final say on what happens. It’s important to note this recommendation may happen sometime in March, and Harreld, who is retiring, may be out of the President’s office by the end of the year, depending on how fast the search for a new president happens.
The Iowa Freedom Riders, the group that led protests over the summer, have been advocating online for the second, holistic model. They note what they really want is complete abolition of the department, but say the model makes progress toward that.
There is plenty of skepticism as to how much will fundamentally change about the department. Students at town halls questioned the willingness of the administration to make radical changes. And we’ve seen plans to overhaul or fully defund police departments in other places run out of steam since June.
Another dimension, which the Iowa City Press-Citizen noted, is that all of this information is limited to people in the university ecosystem with a HawkID. Other Iowa City community members, no matter how close they live to campus, can’t see the proposals or provide feedback.
On one hand, I can understand the desire to have only university-affiliated people submit feedback, but others have said it’s obfuscation of what should be an open government process. The campus is an embedded part of Iowa City. People without HawkIDs come onto campus all the time, and they are affected by how the campus runs its police department.
In other news
After seven hours of rigorous debate, the State Health Facilities Council decided not to grant permission to UIHC to build a $230 million, 36 bed hospital in North Liberty. The decision came after virtually every hospital in the area raised concern about the potential for the hospital taking their business and their patients away.
UIHC certainly has a capacity problem. CEO Suresh Gunasekaran said that the hospital had to turn away more than 2,400 patients in 2019 because they did not have enough beds. Several doctors spoke during the meeting to talk about their difficulties with fitting patients in. But area hospital administrators said this was because UIHC, an academic, highly specialized hospital, has been marketing and pushing for primary, clinical care that could be done by other hospitals in the area.
In Des Moines - Education, education, education
The stack of bills coming out of the Legislature regarding both higher and lower education has gotten higher in the past couple weeks. Here’s are a few that I’m watching:
Jim Carlin won’t try to advance his own bill, which would poll university staff and faculty on their political leanings. It was compared by one senator to McCarthyism.
A subcommittee passed a bill that would require regent universities to post all class syllabi online, including course requirements and required reading. This is pretty clearly targeted at the ISU professor who barred her students from writing papers taking a stance against Black Lives Matter, gay marriage, and abortion.
Another bill passed subcommittee that would require regent schools to have a director of public policy, with an eye to bringing a politically diverse array of speakers to campus.