Two Department of Public Safety officers witnessed Saturday morning's shooting and saw the perpetrator flee down Brown Street but could not pursue him due to the department's current policy of disengagement, according to Chief of Police Mark Porter.
Porter said the incident reinforces the need for arming, though he stressed that the officers exhibited an "outstanding" level of training in their response. The current policy requires officers to disengage when faced with a weapon or violent crime, which put them at a "clear disadvantage" last weekend, Porter said.
"They had no other option but to take cover and disengage," he said. "Being armed would have given the officers an array of options where they could make the appropriate decision to regain control of the situation," which could include pursuing the suspect or returning fire if innocent lives were at risk.
At 2:18 a.m. Saturday morning, two DPS officers were on Brown Street by Wayland Arch, dispersing individuals who were loitering on campus after a party in Sayles Hall that was co-sponsored by Alpha Phi Alpha and The Brotherhood. After an altercation between two small groups that took place within 50 feet of the DPS officers, one individual fired five or six shots aimed at the other group, at which point the officers took cover near their vehicle. No injuries were reported and those involved were unaffiliated with the University, according to a DPS report.
Units from the Providence Police Department were on campus at the time but were not in close proximity to where the shots were fired. They eventually searched the area but were unable to identify the suspect. PPD is currently investigating the incident, with the assistance of DPS.
The training portion of the arming implementation process is 98 percent complete, and Porter said he expects to give a final report to the Arming Implementation Oversight Com-mittee within the next few weeks. The committee, made up of students, faculty, staff and administrators, was established to offer advice and feedback to DPS during the implementation process. Led by Vice President for Admin-istration Walter Hunter, the committee is charged with reviewing DPS's report and informing President Ruth Simmons, who has the final say on the issue.
Simmons announced the decision to arm officers in December 2003, following the recommendations of a consulting group led by William Bratton, now chief of police of the Los Angeles Department.
The implementation process included 16 hours of diversity training, during which officers explored "the phenomena of biased-based policing and the contemporary models of discrimination and bias," according to information Porter provided to The Herald. Trainers included representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice; Fletcher Blanchard, a professor of psychology at Smith College and an expert on racial prejudice; and several University administrators.
Porter praised Brown's officers for following University protocol Saturday morning.
"They took cover for themselves and the people around them. They regrouped. After assessing the situation, they notified the dispatcher with descriptions (of the suspect) and area of flight, and then they canvassed the area, checking for injuries and witnesses and looking for (bullet) shells," Porter said. "That was officers reverting back to good police training."
Though Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services David Greene sent an e-mail to undergraduates Sunday night summarizing the incident, a crime alert was not issued by DPS because the incident was determined to be "isolated" and "random," Porter said. Alerts, which he said are not the department's primary method of communication, are issued only when the community needs to be aware of an "ongoing, continuous threat" that demands a "heightened level of awareness." The department also reports incidents to the community via a weekly open log in The Herald and annually published crime statistics.
"Crime alerts are issued only when we feel it's necessary to put the community at a heightened level of security. My goal is to make sure that when I send out an alert, it is taken very seriously by the community," said Porter, who had years of experience issuing crime alerts as chief of police at the University of Massa-chusetts-Dartmouth. Issuing alerts after every incident reported to the department could potentially dull their effectiveness, he added.
