The debate around cops on college campuses heats up
WASHINGTON (SBG) - College campuses were a little quieter this past Monday when students and professors took a day off to protest police officers on campus. Over 2,000 students and professors from across the country pledged to participate in the ‘National Day of Refusal’ – refusing to do any kind of work over the course of the day on May 3. The goal: To get all police officers off of college campuses permanently.
Calls to defund the police have echoed from coast to coast since protests over police brutality first broke out last summer - including from students and professors on college campuses. A professor from Cypress College is on leave after a viral video in which she disagrees with a student who calls police officers “heroes.”
“A lot of police officers have committed an atrocious crime and have gotten away with it and have never been convicted of any of it,” said the professor.
Last week, at the University of Minnesota, a member of the student government was caught on Zoom encouraging other students to wreak havoc on the school’s on-campus police department.
“Make their lives hell,” the student could be heard saying on the Zoom recording.
In California, an organization called “Cops Off Campus” is spinning up support for a month-long push to abolish campus police departments. The group calls it “Abolition May.” But Sergeant Betsy Smith from The National Police Association calls it trouble.
“Now you’re going to have those people on campus compete for police resources with all the other citizens who live in that jurisdiction,” said Sgt. Smith. “You’re going to have less safe campuses. You’re going to have a rise in crime.”
Ophelia Jacobson from the college watchdog group Campus Reform says, in many cases, students who support the police don’t speak out.
“Many students today feel a lot of pressure to, I guess, stay silent on their beliefs because they fear backlash, just as the student faced at cypress college. But I think it’s also important to point out that now is a critical time for American students and parents to pay close attention to what is going on at our colleges and universities across the nation,” said Jackson.
