Students debate arming Public Safety officers

The Whig-Cliosophic Society hosted a debate Thursday evening over whether the Department of Public Safety’s sworn officers should be allowed to carry guns on campus.

Audience members voted 15-8 in favor of arming the officers. Roughly 30 to 40 people were present at the debate.

Matt Butler ’12 and Steve Lindsay ’12 argued in favor of arming the officers, while former USG president Connor Diemand-Yauman ’10 and Jason Anton ’10 defended the status quo. Butler is also a member of The Daily Princetonian Editorial Board.

Public Safety Director Paul Ominsky, who assumed his post last month, made introductory remarks, and Officer Paul Krzewinski represented the local Fraternal Order of Police (FOP).

Butler and Lindsay argued that officers need guns to protect themselves and the University community.

Diemand-Yauman and Anton responded that any benefit from arming Public Safety officers would be outweighed by the potential dangers associated with bringing weapons on campus.

“If you arm Public Safety, you aren’t just putting a gun on their hip during times when there’s an active shooter on campus,” Diemand-Yauman said. “You’re putting a gun on their hip when you’re playing music too loudly.”

Butler, however, said that it was an “insult” not to arm the officers.

“They need to be given the tools necessary to fulfill their jobs completely,” Butler argued.

“Having weapons available is vital for the officers to defend themselves and in turn protect and defend the community they serve,” said Krzewinski, who represented 18 of the department’s 26 sworn officers. Sworn Public Safety officers receive the same training and are called on to respond to the same incidents as municipal police — except that Public Safety officers do not have guns, he said.

It has been nearly two years since the FOP unsuccessfully petitioned the University and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to support its initiative to arm Public Safety officers. But Thursday night’s debate demonstrated that, even now, the issue remains controversial.

The debate came in the wake of a formal USG recommendation last month that Public Safety officers remain unarmed. The recommendation followed a USG survey of 15 percent of the campus population, in which 56 percent of respondents opposed arming the officers.

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The survey results were used as a central argument against arming Public Safety in Thursday’s debate. Eighty-five percent of survey respondents said they were comfortable approaching a Public Safety officer with a problem, but only 49 percent said they would feel the same way if the officers were armed, Diemand-Yauman said.

“In my opinion, whether or not this fear is justified or rational is irrelevant,” he said. “This is how students feel.”

Diemand-Yauman noted that the dynamic between students and Public Safety would worsen if officers were armed.

But Lindsay argued that the relationship would not deteriorate.

“Calling Public Safety is not out of convenience,” he said. “It’s not something you do to have somebody to come by and have a conversation with. It’s because you have a need.”

Speakers used the 2007 incident at Virginia Tech, during which an active shooter killed 32 people, as an example of the “worst case scenario” to which officers would have to respond.

“I could see a lot of students potentially dying and perhaps even Public Safety officers, needlessly, when they could simply be armed,” Michael Skiles ’12, an audience member, said. “I think a changed dynamic is a very small price to pay for saving the lives of students.”

But, “the chance of such a situation occurring is quite minute,” Anton argued.

“It’s unclear that there is an increase in safety [with arming],” he said, emphasizing that “arming Public Safety significantly jeopardizes [the student-officer] relationship.”