Crime and clarity

In February, Connecticut's Freedom of Information Commission ruled that Yale's police department must respect Freedom of Information Act requests. The decision came in response to a public defender's request for information on two Yale officers who had charged a New Haven teenager riding his bicycle with breach of the peace. The defender, thinking the police had acted inappropriately, had asked Yale's police department for information about the employees. Her request was denied. But earlier this month, after the commision's decision, Yale agreed to comply with the request.

The commission's decision rested on the fact that Yale's police department acts as a public governing body - that is, its policing power extends beyond the boundaries of Yale's campus. According to the Yale police department's web site, officers have "full jurisdiction throughout the city of New Haven, as conferred by the New Haven Board of Police Commissioners." Not true for Brown's Department of Public Safety officers, and that may be a reason why, if put to the same test, DPS wouldn't have to make its records public.

DPS does try to make information on crimes near campus available to students as much as possible. In March, community members were e-mailed about an incident in which DPS was not involved, but which was still relevant: A RISD student was assaulted and robbed while walking on a bridge in Waterplace Park, near Providence Place Mall. When two crimes happened in quick succession towards the end of last semester, DPS responded by increasing police and security officer presence and safeRIDE availability hours.

Making more crime records public would help students lead safer lives on campus. But it would also answer questions stemming from the controversial incidents that hit campus every few years. When a graduate student was arrested in 2006 for failing to show his Brown ID to PPD officers working for the University, students were left piecing together details from e-mails from administrators and the account of the graduate student. Among other reassurances, administrators repeated that DPS kept records of stop data - including the race and gender of the persons stopped by officers - and that DPS would do a better job of keeping such records in the future.

Though DPS makes stop data public annually, it should consider updating its numbers more than once a year and more publicly displaying it to the Brown community. While such racially charged incidents come up only once or twice in a student's time at Brown - similar incidents occurred in 2004, as well as in 2002, when two black undergraduates refused to show their Brown IDs to DPS officers - having relevant information regularly brought to the public's attention would do more than assurances that DPS officers receive "diversity training" to show students that administrators are committed to treating all students fairly.

The 16-year-old riding his bicycle in New Haven presents a clear-cut case of police officers acting inappropriately. But most cases of alleged police misconduct aren't so clear-cut. Though a private institution, Brown owes its community members as much clarity as if it were public.