Under the current policy, Public Safety officers would need to be accompanied by armed Borough Police officers to respond to an active shooter on campus. The Editorial Board has previously called for careful consideration of this issue. We argued that the decision to arm Public Safety hinged on whether or not this action “would decrease the response time” to these incidents. Given the lengthy response time to the recent gun scare on campus, we are now convinced that arming Public Safety is the best way to protect the campus community.
Upon receiving a call from Public Safety on the morning of March 7, it took Borough Police officers several minutes to report to Spelman Halls, the location of the reported shooter. Given that active shooters overwhelmingly act quickly, this is not fast enough.
Public Safety officers, who are fully trained New Jersey police officers, would be far more efficient and effective at responding to a shooting incident than the Borough Police. The officers patrol campus and are knowledgeable about the University’s intricate layout. It is impractical and dangerous to use a Borough Police officer — who must travel from outside campus and may not know how to get to somewhere like 1939 Hall — as the first armed responder when Public Safety could report almost immediately.
University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt ’96 claimed that arming Public Safety would damage the “supportive and respectful” relationship between students and Public Safety. Public Safety practices community policing, which emphasizes proactive engagement with students in fulfilling their duties. But community policing is not incompatible with guns. In fact, the concept of community policing arose from municipal and urban police departments, in which officers are armed.
We do not believe guns will compromise the relationship between students and public safety at Princeton. But to assuage the misguided fears of students who equate this policy with allowing security guards to brandish pistols while breaking up parties, the officers who patrol dorms on Thursday and Saturday nights could be unarmed.
The dissenters to this editorial think that, since arming campus safety officers is uncommon among private schools our size, it is an unwise decision. But this does not mean the policy is not the right one for Princeton. Moreover, the dissent cites a Department of Justice survey that predates the Virginia Tech tragedy and thus does not capture the increase in armed campus police forces after that shooting nor the choices of the majority of Ivy League institutions. When the sample is expanded to all institutions surveyed, 67 percent arm their officers. And ultimately, the best way to judge this policy is not on its popularity at other institutions but rather on whether or not it will decrease the response time to an emergency.
It is unlikely that Princeton will be the site of an armed shooting, but Public Safety can and should be prepared to respond immediately and effectively to such situations. In this country, we have long recognized that guns in the hands of police officers improve general safety. To the extent that we agree that Borough Police officers should have guns, there is no reason why Public Safety is unqualified to have them. And we would all be safer for it.
See the dissent to this editorial here.
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