UCLA Police: Targeting Black and Hispanic Local Residents?

The importance of demarcating a university’s campus from a municipality became more important once universities created their own police departments, which are distinct from a city’s police department both in terms of mission and democratic legitimacy. From the standpoint of a police department, being subject to a university’s administration is qualitatively different than being a department under a democratically-elected mayor and city council. I contend that in terms of how university-police employees treat Black and Hispanic local residents, this fundamental distinction is crucial even though it is seldom made. UCLA, located in the Westwood area of Los Angeles in California, is a case in point. So too—and even more so, is the private Yale University, located in New Haven in Connecticut.

The full essay is at "UCLA Police."

On University “Police Departments”: Accountability at Yale

Whereas in the E.U., universities do not have their own private police departments because the state governments hold the police power, the situation in the U.S. has devolved from such democratic accountability such that even small colleges (and even hospitals!) typically have their own “police departments.” This presents the unwitting American public with a potentially problem of conflict of interest: in disputes between a college or university administration, which is not democratically elected, and stakeholders, including students and the general public, the organizational police forces take orders from one side. This is especially problematic in cases, such as at Yale, in which the organizational police employees patrol off campus—off the university’s own “territory”—and arrest people who are unaffiliated with Yale and have not even been on the campus. Such a usurpation of the prerogative of the city of New Haven comes with the loss of democratic accountability.

The full essay is at "On University 'Police Departments'."