If you’ve got a son or daughter attending college, how confident are you that they’re safe on campus?
Some New Jersey universities have armed police forces, including Rutgers, NJIT, Rowan, Stockton, Saint Peter’s and Monmouth, while others, including Seton Hall, Rider, Drew, Thomas Edison State College, Jersey
City University, Fairleigh Dickinson and most community colleges do not.
Princeton University recently announced their campus police will soon have access to guns — in their patrol cars — but they won’t normally be carrying weapons around campus.
“It’s based actually on the kind of issues the police face, in the general case, enforcing the law on campuses doesn’t require being armed,” says Todd Clear, a criminal justice professor at Rutgers University.
Clear said sworn officers on college campuses go through the same training at certified academies as any other police officer in the Garden State.
“They get trained on the law but they get trained on the most recent ideas about police practices and they get assessed in terms of their physical abilities,” he said.
The professor also says sworn university police usually only have jurisdiction on their campuses, but in cities like Newark, NJIT and Rutgers police will also work in areas off-campus and they can make arrests.
He said in most situations, campus and municipal police work together.
“There’s always close cooperation and there’s often-times quite close involvement operationally,” Clear said.
He also said most schools, in addition to having a regular police force, also have community safety officers