Arguably, gun violence and gun ownership is one of the most prominent topics in the country. This past semester, University of Rhode Island campus police armed their officers after a year long training process. While no officers have had to discharge their weapons yet, URI students still have mixed reactions about arming campus police.

 

“Having armed police officers along with all the negative social media that’s been stemming throughout the past few months kind of puts students on edge,” Ryan Wallace, a URI sophomore computer science major, said.

 

Elana Rivkin, a sophomore film studies major agrees with Wallace, and has some mixed feelings of her own. “Unless we’ve had significant issues in the past where we have needed...campus police to be armed, it can be taken the wrong way or it can actually make students afraid of police,” Rivkin said.

 

While neither students have had negative interactions with police, both Rivkin and Wallace have their own concerns about making the campus environment more hostile.

 

“I personally don’t have an issue with them being armed, in fact it somewhat feels safer. However, I don’t like the culture of fear that it brings to the campus, that we need to have armed security officers,” Wallace said. “Where we should feel like those are the people keeping us safe, but if [students] are intimidated by them it actually could do the opposite.”

 

Director of Public Safety Stephen Baker understands students’ concerns when it comes to guns on campus. He firmly believes that arming officers is the right move to keeping students safe.

 

“It’s hard to say what we might have prevented by carrying firearms, but at least we know we can respond if necessary. We hope that it never happens, but we have to be prepared,” said Baker. “I think it gives our officers more confidence that they can do their job and be true first responders.”

 

Baker said that officers endured extensive firearms and conflict management training before being armed. He said that the emphasis on training, policy review, and the new community policing standards are imperative to keeping officers and campus community members safe.

“It involved not only firearms training, but a lot of mental health recognition training, implicit bias training,” Baker said. “Not only training with our firearms but with less lethal weapons such as pepper spray and batons.”

 

Baker added that de escalation was also a necessary aspect of the overall training. He notes that while the campus is fortunate to not have many conflicts that end in violent conflicts, and that his officers can usually diffuse the situation before it comes to that.

 

“We know that the firearm is a tool, and is a last resort,” Baker said. “But when we have to use force then we have to justify it and make sure we follow policies.”