Four students spoke at a public hearing Thursday night that will help decide whether the Department of Public Safety is reaccredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. The hearing was videotaped for later review by the commission, which is commonly known as CALEA.
DPS voluntarily contracted with CALEA, an outside organization that reviews and accredits security forces, and first received its accreditation status from the commission in 1998. Every three years, the department undergoes a reaccreditation process in which its Professional Standards Bureau must prove to CALEA that DPS is compliant with 446 standards in nine categories, including inter-agency relationships, administration, traffic operations and prisoner and court-related activities, according to the department's Web site.
CALEA originally set the public hearing date in August. But Mark Porter, chief of police and director of public safety, received phone calls from students "expressing their disappointment for not being able to attend" the summer hearing, Porter said. Porter then sent CALEA a formal request asking to hold a second public hearing during the academic year. CALEA assessors came to campus for two days in August to conduct their on-site review but postponed writing their report until after the second, rescheduled hearing.
"I got the sense from the calls I received from students that they wanted an opportunity to appear at the hearing and voice concerns and that they also wanted some type of dialogue with DPS," Porter said. "We always want more input. We can never have enough."
About a dozen students were in attendance to hear the four who spoke, prefaced by remarks from George Carpenter, a police chief from Wilmette, Ill., who is leading CALEA's onsite assessment. He read an official statement from the commission and requested that students limit their comments to five to 10 minutes.
Josh Teitelbaum '08 read a statement on behalf of an alum who graduated in December 2005. The student was attacked on Benefit Street in September 2005. "I was knocked to the ground, and I sustained various injuries, later requiring medical attention. My attackers repeatedly yelled the word 'faggot,' " the student recounted in his letter as read by Teitelbaum.
The student went directly to DPS headquarters, where his injuries were photographed, and he filed an incident report and received emergency medical attention. The student said that when he returned to DPS to try to classify the incident as a hate crime, "department representatives had to look up the definition of a hate crime." He said that his original police report had been altered, that DPS told him hate crimes had to be reported through the Providence Police Department and that photographs taken of his injuries just after the attack were lost and "have yet to be recovered."
"Members of the community were never informed that a hate crime had taken place," the statement continued.
Kristin Jordan '09 also spoke of being assaulted on campus last year, and she expressed her concerns with the department's follow-up to the incident. Right after the incident occurred, Jordan said, a friend called DPS for her. "The dispatcher ... put my friend on hold. It took quite a bit of time for the officer to arrive. What made him arrive was a call from my mother - at least that's what I was led to believe," Jordan said.
She also said that when she returned the next day to report something she had forgotten, DPS was unable to locate her original statement.
She acknowledged DPS' outreach efforts - she attended a DPS workshop for the Third World Transition Program's participants - but questioned the department's attitude. "During that workshop the police officers were sometimes disrespectful ... smiling and smirking," Jordan said. "It's not a breach of protocol, but it is general disrespect."
Michael da Cruz '08.5 reported a recent interaction with DPS that occurred while he was protesting outside of the career fair. "While generally, especially by the end when the deans showed up, (DPS) was respectful, at the beginning they continued to yell at me and threaten to remove me even though the Brown student handbook and a dean's hearing last year affirmed my right to be there," da Cruz said. He said DPS is "woefully uninformed" of student rights.
Not all the student comments were negative. Callie Lawrence '09, who said she spoke on behalf of the women's lacrosse team, said the team has "developed a great relationship with Officer Pat." She said she wanted to recognize the officer and DPS for "the community outreach being done."
Teitelbaum told The Herald after the event that a focus on outreach, mentioned by two of the student speakers, is not enough on the part of DPS. "Reaching out to make people think DPS is better, friendlier and more capable is not the same as DPS being better, friendlier and more capable, and outreach at events like TWTP and women's lacrosse can mask DPS' failings," he said.
DPS' previous efforts to gauge public opinion have not garnered much student response. At the last reaccreditation hearing, in April 2004, only one student voiced a complaint. And in the last public survey, prior to the 2004 reaccreditation, only 4.25 percent of students and 3.09 percent of faculty and staff responded.
Preparations for the on-site CALEA assessment start a year in advance, Porter said. DPS offered the community ways to provide input through public information sessions, a special telephone line linked to the CALEA assessors and a public opinion survey.
In addition to Thursday's public hearing, DPS is also holding an open forum Oct. 23 in which representatives from DPS and the Providence Police Department will respond to students' concerns.
