PROVIDENCE, R.I. ― Faculty union leaders at the University of Rhode Island are demanding the school take several steps before instituting a plan to give guns to campus police, including outside oversight on using force.
The executive committee of the URI chapter of the American Association of University Professors voted last week to demand that a new use-of-force policy being developed be approved by the attorney general. It also wants the attorney general’s office to oversee and adjudicate complaints about excessive use of force brought against campus police.
Those are among several demands the union’s leadership is making following university President David Dooley’s decision last week to arm campus police, saying that would help ensure its campus is safe and that police can respond quickly to any threat.
URI is the only public university in the nation that does not arm its campus police, although Frank Annunziato, the union’s executive director, points out the state’s other public colleges, Rhode Island College and the Community College of Rhode Island, have chosen not to arm police on their campuses.
Annunziato said it is important as URI puts the new policy into place that it seeks the expertise of outsiders such as the attorney general’s office to make the policy and then make sure it is followed. Amy Kempe, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, said that while the office would be available as a resource to URI, she said the attorney general has no statutory authority to approve policy or review complaints about excessive use of force in individual departments.
Annunziato said if not the attorney general, some other external agency should be involved because the university does not have those skills.
“They don’t know what they’re doing,” he said. “It should be some outside force that does it.”
