Column: Despite criticism, campus police should remain on patrol

It was a press conference that perhaps raised more questions than it answered.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters took to the podium after a grand jury returned a murder indictment against police officer Ray Tensing after he shot and killed Samuel Debose during a traffic stop despite the fact that Mr. Debose was unarmed.

But the interest and discussion surrounding this case hasn’t just centered on the fact that Mr. Debose was black and Officer Tensing was white. Tensing served as a police officer at the University of Cincinnati, and that day Prosecutor Deters shared his thoughts on campus police departments in general.

“The university does a great job educating people … and that should be their job,” Deters said. “[Fielding] police officers shouldn’t be the role of this university.”

University President Santa Ono later announced that campus police would no longer patrol off campus (where the death of Mr. Debose took place), and the case has sparked a national debate on what the role of campus police departments should be.

In this new school year, the University of South Carolina campus police (USCPD) will be tasked with keeping the campus safe. And I am glad they are here.

Our campus is located in a large urban area, and is sometimes prone to crime. These crimes can be violent in nature. The surrounding neighborhoods, while generally safe, are also sometimes subject to violent crime as well.

That’s not to say the campus or even Columbia itself is unsafe. But crime is a fact of life on- and off-campus, and policing a large concentration of people in a relatively small area is difficult and sometimes dangerous work. It requires a special set of skills and considerations.

Some have said that in Officer Tensing’s case, the fact he was wearing a body camera helped uncover the facts. USCPD is equipped with body cameras, and they were even before Columbia city police.

I think how far jurisdiction of campus police departments should extend, what their role should be in the neighborhoods surrounding campuses and how much training, responsibilities and accountability they should have is a worthy debate. I don’t think that abolishing campus police and returning the large job of keeping campuses safe to city police is the right move.

Part of educating students is ensuring they are safe so they can receive that education. I am grateful that our university invests in our safety and that officers are willing to go to work so that we can study, work and live in a safe environment.

We can all take steps to ensure we stay safe on- and off-campus, but there’s only so much we can do. We need trained professionals keeping watch, and with USCPD I feel confident saying that they have our back.