Where campus cops fit into the conversation on police reform
By Lisi Burciaga
On the first day of the 2020 Spring semester, just weeks before the pandemic sent students and staff packing, the PCC campus bustled with student life. While students set up booths to honor Chinese New Year on one side of campus, a celebration on the other side of campus kicked off Black History Month.
“Where the Chinese New Year celebration was happening, there were no campus police officers. Where the Black History Month celebration was happening, there were four,” PCC President Dr. Erika Endrijonas said. “So we needed to ask ourselves, why did we think we needed to have no police presence whatsoever at the Chinese New Year celebration but we needed four at the Black History month celebration? That’s not good.”
This realization was not entirely immediate for Endrijonas — it was the national reckoning towards law enforcement after the police killing of George Floyd in May of 2020 that brought the issue of biased policing, on campus and otherwise, to the forefront.
“It helped us kind of open our eyes, for lack of a better term, to how we have had some biased behavior on our campus,” Endrijonas said.
The events served as an opportunity to call for reflection within the campus police force.
“I want our campus police to do appropriate training and to really ask themselves, when deciding to deploy officers or cadets, what they are basing those decisions on,” Endrijonas said. “I think starting to ask those questions rather than just assuming that they’re doing what they’re supposed to do is necessary, which isn’t to say we don’t trust them, but the fact is we did have a problem.”
When it comes to trust in the police, a study by Gallup that has observed Americans’ confidence in law enforcement every year since 1994 suggests that 30 years ago, a majority of Americans supported the force. However, the public confidence in police has dwindled with every decade.
The study found that 48 percent of Americans reported “a great deal” of confidence in police last year — the first time the survey ever reported a number below the majority. According to Gallup, the root of the shift was evident: the public outcry that followed the police killing of Floyd in May of 2020 was a tipping point that incited large-scale action.
While departments nationwide saw budget cuts amid the growing public debate on police reform that followed Floyd’s death, the funding for the PCC Police and Safety Department remained consistent. The budget, which is approved by the district at the start of the fiscal year beginning every July, was also unaffected by the pandemic despite the fact that virtual learning decreased the need for policing.
“The department did not face any budget cuts due to the pandemic,” department Chief Steven Matchan said. “The department has always received great support from our administration who understands the importance of keeping our campus safe and secure.”
This past year, the department spent less money on cadet patrols and instead reallocated more of its budget to other areas of the department, such as training. According to Endrijonas, the officers that still patrol campus monitor the local homeless population and unlock doors for staff members that come to campus periodically. As some staff members start to return to campus three days a week, the number of cadets on patrol will likely increase.
“Typically, anytime that we’re thinking about area budgets the first question is ‘can the budgets just be reinvested into other things? So, training is a great area,” PCC’s Interim Vice President of Administrative Services Candace Jones said. “As we reopen the campus, we will continuously reevaluate what the staffing numbers need to look like in relation to safety and presence and how many cadets are actually needed for that work.”
Coincidentally, the decreased demand for policing brought on by the pandemic has allowed the department to focus more on training and conduct and navigate the changing outlook on law enforcement.
“Are our officers aware of the growing national issues related to policing? The answer is yes, they’re very aware of the things that are coming out, particularly how policing impacts communities of color,” Jones said. “And with that there is an acknowledgement that we have to do something and I think our starting point is really on training. They’ve gone through some levels of implicit bias training and we’re working on figuring out how to increase that in a way that resonates with this campus and is continuous.”
Matchan echoed Jones’ point, saying that the events of last year cultivated a shift in the outlook on law enforcement in America, the PCC police department included.
“I believe there has been a change in the public outlook on all police departments throughout the country because of the events that occur outside of our campus,” Matchan said. “I truly trust in our relationships with our campus community to set us apart from others and our open and continuous communication to immediately address concerns from the public we serve.”
While the department avoided budget cuts, Endrijonas ensured that changes were made to their general manual, the code of conduct that guides campus policing practices. Since PCC officers do not carry weapons, she opted to regulate another common forceful practice within policing. During the summer following Floyd’s death she issued an executive order to ban the use of chokeholds on campus, a practice that was previously permitted in the manual. She then appointed prior Vice President Mike Bush to lead a task force to review the orders manual for biases and update it accordingly.
When the pandemic left the department to police a virtually empty campus, it not only influenced the demand for policing, but the discourse surrounding law enforcement as well. Endrijonas said that the distance has limited the opportunities for dialogue surrounding this issue.
“I’ve had some folks say in emails ‘I really hope we’re going to have a different approach to campus police,’ but I will say that the pandemic and the fact that students, faculty and staff aren’t here has really muted that for the moment,” Endrijonas said. “Because in some ways it’s hard to remain engaged when you’re not there.”
She noted that the task force led by Bush struggled to maintain long term engagement. Although combing through the police orders manual for gender and racial biases was a helpful effort, it lacked the community element of the cause that often keeps people engaged.
“That’s really time consuming work which is very different from ‘let’s come together and talk about what a particular activity might look like or a particular training might look like,’” Endrijonas said.
For Jones, revising the police orders manual is a start.
“The policy manual is just one step,” Jones said. “But in addition to that, there needs to be lots of training opportunities, not only for faculty and staff but also our police, because it’s a community effort in terms of how we deescalate situations and how we involve ourselves. We are continuing to work through and think about how we can serve our students in a culturally responsive way and in a way that resonates.”
Endrijonas stressed the importance of communicating her critiques to the police force, again citing last year’s incident with the Chinese New Year and Black History Month celebrations.
“Part of it is talking with our police chief as well as our leadership team about what we expect,” Endrijonas said. “Going back to the Chinese New Year versus Black History Month celebration, I don’t want to see that again.”
Jones believes that such moments should be remembered and revisited rather than swept under the rug in order to incite long term change.
“We need to find ways, when these moments happen, to collect data on them so we can say definitively if there is a skewed approach to the incidents that we’re seeing on campus,” Jones said. “It’s having these moments when they’re questioned: why are there four officers here and no officers there? It’s those critical questions and conversations that I think need to happen and continuously happen.”
