Despite their intended role as peacekeepers, private university officers are often responsible for violence against students and local residents alike. In July 2015, a University of Cincinnati police officer fatally shot unarmed 37-year-old Sam DuBose. Tyrone West, a 44-year-old Black man, was killed by Morgan State University police in 2013 during a traffic stop. And in 2018, a University of Chicago police officer shot fourth-year student Charles Thomas. 

Sam DuBrose, Tyrone West, and Charles Thomas are just three names on an ever-growing list of people who have been injured or lost their lives at the hands of private police officers. Student dollars go toward the upkeep of these oppressive institutions, which are responsible for the violence and mutilation of bodies.

The presence of these forces on and off campus is not welcome — not by students, and not by the communities at large. 

More than one third of four-year colleges across the country are equipped with their own well-funded, private, and armed police forces that make arrests every day. Yet despite functioning as full-fledged law enforcement, these departments are able to evade public record laws, allowing countless cases of police abuse and force to go unseen and unpunished.

In most states, public record laws apply to private organizations that employ government authority to perform a governmental function. There is no question that campus police fall into this category. But universities continue to argue their private status makes them exempt from such records requests, protecting themselves and displaying a flagrant disregard for accountability. 

The Clery Act, signed in 1990, aimed to create accountability for campus police forces. But the law does not go nearly far enough. For example, while it requires the maintenance of a daily crime log, campus forces often provide little detail and are easily able to withhold information. This statute is the sole measure in place to ensure the accountability of armed campus police officers. 

The majority of these private forces are not just policing their respective campuses, but also have jurisdiction deep in local cities. For example, the University of Chicago is home to one of the largest private police forces in the world. The student body numbers under 15,000, but the UC Police Department puts boots down in surrounding neighborhoods, placing 65,000 city residents under the watch of a force with virtually no accountability. 

This arrangement is not unique to Chicago. In cities like Detroit, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and South Bend, Indiana, campus police departments also patrol in the city, often in predominantly Black neighborhoods which already suffer from devastating structural inequalities. People of color, especially Black folks, feel afraid of the people meant to make them feel safe. Educational institutions and the spaces around them can be emancipatory; yet, people of color find themselves in chains.

Young people have started to take notice, and have called for the end to private police on campus. Last year, students at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore demanded the university reverse its decision to create its own police department. Coalitions of students, faculty members, and neighbors at Harvard University, University of Virginia, Columbia University, and Ohio State University have also called for the removal of private police forces. 

But let’s be clear: Universities without private police forces are not spared from the horrors of police brutality. Partnerships with local police are also bringing unwanted publicly funded officers onto campuses. 

While these forces may not run into the same issues with open-record laws, they come with their own array of atrocities. Public police departments with known patterns of corruption, excessive use of force, and racial profiling are welcomed onto campuses with open arms by university administrators. 

Following demands organized by students, the University of Minnesota recently agreed to cut ties with the Minneapolis Police Department. Northwestern University, Columbia University, and New York University students are also calling on their administrators to cut ties with local police. Administrators should follow the lead of student activists and institutions like the University of Minnesota and cut ties with local police departments. Universities are responsible for the safety of their students and the surrounding community  — and police have proven time and time again to pose a threat to safety, rather than promote it.

As calls to defund the police grow, it is imperative that private police forces with no accountability are prioritized. Heavily armed police forces with no transparency are inexcusable, and university administrations must move to defund them. On college campuses, our nation’s playgrounds for research and discovery, we must protect our young minds and the precious communities that surround them at all costs.

Any other choice is a blatant denial of safety and justice to people across the country 一 those who pay to attend these institutions, and those who live in the communities intruded upon by them.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that all three students were killed by university police. Charles Thomas was injured, not killed. We regret this error.

Sanjali De Silva, Communications Intern, ACLU

As the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to become a death sentence for people trapped in prisons and jails across the U.S., the actions — or inaction — of prosecutors to decarcerate have had a tangible life or death impact. We examined the responses from prosecutors in the 20 biggest cities in this country. This is the third post in the series — you can also read the first and second.

11. Austin, Texas
 
Austin’s Margaret Moore understood the need to respond to the pandemic’s threat to people living and working in local jails. She played a significant role in bringing judges to the table to proactively work to save lives during COVID-19. The judges decided to grant no-cost bonds whenever practical to clear jail space, resulting in a dip in the jail population. As of May 12, Travis County’s adult jail system held about 1,600 people and had no positive test results. But test accessibility is distressingly low — only about 1 percent of the county’s average jail population was tested during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, Moore otherwise had an unclear role in Travis County’s pandemic decarceration efforts — unlike prosecutors across the country declining to prosecute various offenses, identifying people to be released from jail, and fighting back against short-sighted restrictions by the Texas governor’s executive order limiting pretrial releases. By mid-March, her re-election opponent, Jose Garza, publicly called upon her and other city officials to do more to decarcerate jails and prisons, thereby removing hotbeds for the spread of the disease. In mid-July, voters weighed in on her limited action, choosing Garza as the Democratic candidate for November’s prosecutor election. 

12. Jacksonville, Florida 

Jacksonville’s Melissa Nelson took early, swift action to save lives facing the pandemic in local jails. By late March, she made a temporary plan to release a significant number of people, directing her office to offer plea deals that avoid jail time, release some people pre-trial, not filing charges in non-violent “marginal” cases, and determining whether a time-served and/or probationary sentence is appropriate in any nonviolent case where the state is currently offering one year of jail time or less. 

The result of these policies: By late April, the number of people held in the Duval County jails fell by 21 percent. These are positive outcomes, but Nelson’s policies still fall short of helping everyone potentially vulnerable to the virus by unilaterally choosing not to consider those accused or convicted of violent or sexual offenses, rather than reviewing their circumstances before making a decision.

13. Fort Worth, Texas 

Fort Worth’s Sharen Wilson has been extraordinarily silent as the pandemic sweeps across the country, despite the deathly threat it poses to those trapped in jails and prisons. But Tarrant County judges and sheriffs picked up her slack, holding court proceedings to grant bonds or shorten sentence lengths so people could get released sooner. 

Unfortunately, Wilson seems to have continued business as usual — including seeking enhancements against people for low-level offenses, such as trespassing, failing to acknowledge that forcing people to spend more time behind bars during a pandemic could have fatal consequences.
 
14. Columbus, Ohio 

In Columbus, Ohio, two prosecutors share responsibility for the city’s criminal system — Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien handles felony cases, while Columbus City Prosecutor Zach Klein has jurisdiction over misdemeanors. Both made small steps towards helping people behind bars as the coronavirus spread throughout the country, but fell short of making the deep changes necessary to save lives.

In late March, Klein announced that his office was already working on criminal justice reform that would “jail only those that need to be locked up,” without providing any details on who that would include. He also expressed concern about crafting blanket policies for release. Instead, jail drops between the start of the pandemic and March 24 largely flowed from sheriffs using alternatives to arrest more often to avoid bringing people to jail.

O’Brien has taken a few steps in the right direction, including limited court proceedings and only pursuing new, serious felonies. However, he did not proactively review cases involving people serving their sentences. Moreover, O’Brien expressed concern about not being more involved in court decisions to release eight youths from a juvenile detention center where the outbreak struck nearly half of the incarcerated youth and about a quarter of the staff. 

These small gestures toward release simply do not go far enough.

15. Charlotte, North Carolina 

Charlotte’s Spencer Merriweather quickly worked to change his pretrial policies in response to COVID-19. At the beginning of the pandemic, his office released a statement saying they have and will continue to work diligently to ensure that the only people in pretrial custody during this crisis are the people he believes pose a risk to public safety. Merriweather claims the initiatives launched by his office to limit pretrial custody of people accused of nonviolent offenses have reduced incarceration by 14 percent since the start of the pandemic. 

Although he has shown flexibility on pretrial policies, Merriweather has not focused at all on those already serving sentences, even as nearby prosecutors do. Decarcerate Mecklenburg, a coalition of community activists, attorneys, and religious leaders, held rolling protests in vehicles circling Mecklenburg County Detention Center, the District Attorney’s Office, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police headquarters, demanding in part that Merriweather release people held on bond along with those with six months or less on their sentence, pregnant women, and everyone over 50 years of age. 

Without action for those vulnerable but already serving time, Merriweather is leaving hundreds if not thousands of people behind bars to face a deadly virus. In fact, in late July, more than 40 people at the Mecklenburg County Detention Center have tested positive for Coronavirus.

Nicole Zayas Fortier, Policy Counsel, ACLU Campaign for Smart Justice,
& Weronika Bzura, Legal Intern, ACLU

As the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to become a death sentence for people trapped in prisons and jails across the U.S., the actions — or inaction — of prosecutors to decarcerate have had a tangible life or death impact. We examined the responses from prosecutors in the 20 biggest cities in this country. This is the second post in the series. You can read the first here.

6. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 

Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner’s response during this pandemic has been both frustratingly slow and limited. After COVID-19 had already reached the city, his office was still considering ways to alleviate the local jail population. In March, Krasner signed onto a national joint statement urging local officials across the country to stop admitting people to jail, when they pose no serious risk to the physical safety of the community. Then, when turning to action in his own office, he ultimately instructed his office to limit bail requests to serious cases, asked his prosecutors to consider the virus in making charging decisions, and agreed to work with public defenders to identify who could be released from jail. 

But results came slowly. By April 3, only about 7 percent of the city’s approximately 5,000-person jail population had been released — a smaller percentage than virtually every other major city in America. Krasner has pointed to judicial inaction as a barrier to success, but judges point back to his office, citing that he took several weeks to approve lists of incarcerated people for release. Moreover, Krasner ran for office campaigning for and has already implemented bail reform policies requiring recommendations of the minimal necessary terms of release for people awaiting trial, but court watchers found in 2019 that Philadelphia prosecutors consistently recommend more than what the court deems necessary. Even through the coronavirus peak, where each bail set could be a death sentence, court watchers have found that the rate of cash bail stayed consistently between 40 to 50 percent of all cases. 

7. San Antonio, Texas 

Early on, San Antonio’s Joe Gonzales embraced the need for decarceration in response to the coronavirus. In March, Gonzales signed onto a national joint statement urging local officials across the country to stop admitting people to jail, where there’s no serious risk to the physical safety of the community. He also challenged Governor Abbott’s jail order, which limited the release of individuals who are incarcerated to those who can pay bail, as a threat that would overcrowd local jails at a dangerous time. Moreover, he asked his office’s prosecutors to lower bail requests for people accused of nonviolent offenses. 

But Gonzales could have done more. As a prosecutor, he could have focused less on getting through as many cases as possible, and more on lowering the amount of cases there are to begin with. Unfortunately, Gonzales continued to insist that grand juries should meet to allow charges to proceed rather than dismiss them. A more decarceration-oriented approach would have been for Gonzales to dismiss a larger swath of cases, especially where individuals are at high risk of contracting the virus, or don’t pose a safety risk to the general public. 

8. San Diego, California 

As the coronavirus spread through the country, San Diego’s Summer Stephan announced in late March that her office was working closely with the local sheriff’s department to identify people in jail to approve for release. Stephan said the offices would focus particularly on those who are medically fragile and vulnerable, whether pretrial or already serving their sentence. 

However, public defenders believe Stephan’s office is not doing enough. For example, in April, California’s Judicial Council set bail at zero statewide for most misdemeanor and lower-level felonies in an attempt to limit the further spread of the virus. Despite these efforts aiming to reduce the number of people who enter jails, Stephan tried to circumvent this rule, arguing in a letter to the Chief Justice that the rule needed a carveout that would allow for prosecutors to argue that a person’s criminal history should prevent release more often, and add conditions for those who are able to avoid jail during the pandemic.

9. Dallas, Texas 

Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot swiftly decided that decarceration was the best route to slow the coronavirus in jails. In March, he signed onto a national joint statement, urging local officials across the country to stop admitting people to jail so long as public safety is unlikely to be harmed. The following month, he joined three other Texas prosecutors in challenging Gov. Abbott’s jail order, which limits the release of people to those who can pay bail. Creuzot, for his part, announced that his office has worked with defense attorneys to identify who could be released pretrial and criticized police officers for continuing to arrest people for minor charges such as drug possession.

Unfortunately, releases from the county jail have been slow, to Creuzot’s frustration. In fact, in March, the jail held almost 1,000 people over its usual average — at the height of the pandemic. Unfortunately, by April 26, the jail’s population had only dropped by 500, from 5,879 to 5,309, and had one of the highest numbers of incarcerated people in the state who tested positive for the virus. 

Despite his expressed frustrations and advocates demanding reform to help people trapped in jail, Creuzot did not publish changes to his office’s COVID-19 decarceration policies that would leverage his authority to support declining charges, releasing people pretrial or post-conviction, or recommending non-incarceration sentences. 

10. San Jose, California 

Santa Clara County, which encompasses San Jose, was among the first places to report cases of the coronavirus. Yet San Jose’s Jeff Rosen has not taken much action during the pandemic. Certainly, his office has embraced some change — prosecutors there report they are no longer considering risk of future property crimes worth keeping someone in jail pretrial, reviewed and agreed to 150 people getting released whom they had already argued should await trial behind bars, and were identifying people serving short sentences who should leave early to alleviate jail populations. While steps in the right direction, each of these actions is quite limited. 

Moreover, Rosen was far more vocal about policies others were passing to help slow the virus’ spread in jails than his own efforts. For example, he publicly expressed reservations about pretrial releases in April, when he admitted concerns about a recent court order that would allow people accused of misdemeanors and non-violent felonies to be released before their trials without bail. 

Not taking enough initiative may be par for the course for Rosen. Even before the pandemic, public defenders have thrown mud at Rosen for maintaining stark racial disparities in his office’s decisions and influences over who goes to jail and who doesn’t. While Rosen has discussed the issue at length, his inaction — much like his limited action during COVID-19 — speaks volumes.

Nicole Zayas Fortier, Policy Counsel, ACLU Campaign for Smart Justice,
& Weronika Bzura, Legal Intern, ACLU