Dealing With The Police

POLICE!

That is what wasn't on the vehicle that I observed.

Quite often, as we patrol the campus that we are responsible for, we find ourselves faced with a dilemma. We observe suspicious activity at a location just outside our property. Since we are not police and our main goal is to be seen, we do not confront people. So, we place a call to our local police department. Their response is often quick and professional. However, there are times when the police feel that we are "trying to be the police."

This happened recently as I was patrolling the campus. I had been trying to contact a person at a residence that is adjacent to our property. They had witnessed a situation between me and another man who claimed that I had not done enough to protect his friend. His friend and another person got into a physical altercation. As I drove through the area to check on our property, he came out of a house waving a shirt and yelling for someone to stop. Another man was walking away from that general area and I thought he was yelling at him. A lady, sitting at a nearby residence in a lawn chair with what appeared to be relatives or friends, looked at me and said, "Don’t pay attention to him. He is crazy."

Well, I didn't think I needed to deal with a crazy person so I continued on my rounds. The next day I got word that the man had called the administration and complained that I had ignored his plea for me to stop.

I needed to contact the lady that was sitting in the lawn chair and see if she had seen anything criminal happening. I wanted to know for two reasons. Reason one is the Clery Act. Reason two is that I wanted to know if I had missed something that possibly I should have seen. I stopped by the lady's residence two or three times in the course of the day and nobody was home. The people who live there are acquaintances and I know them when I see them. I wouldn't call them friends.

Later that night I saw a vehicle parked in the driveway of the residence of the people I had been trying to contact. Thinking that the people to whom I needed to speak with had returned, I turned toward the driveway and had just started to pull in when I noticed that the man coming from the back side of the house was not the resident that belonged there. Then he acted like a deer caught in the headlights of a fast moving vehicle. I got a partial license number and as I drove away this guy jumped in his vehicle and drove off at an excessive speed.

I made a turn around an island that has two houses sitting in the middle and came up behind the vehicle. I thought I might be able to get a complete license number at the stop sign we were approaching just in case he had done something at the residence in question. I observed the vehicle for a couple of blocks then returned to our property and called the local police. I gave a description of the vehicle and the address of the house where he was seen.A few minutes later a police officer pulled up and said in a mad tone "What is the urgency about this vehicle?" To which I replied that there was no "urgency." He told me that there was a problem with me "approaching people who were not on our property." He then added something to the effect that "you are not the police and you can't go around approaching people." After explaining the details the officer said that he wasn't mad at me, he was just concerned for me. That was not what I heard in his voice. His demeanor changed and we parted as friends.

It seems that the problem was that I had inadvertently called the police about an undercover officer who was working on a case in the area. I almost accidentally messed up their operation.My suggestion to those in the sworn ranks is this. When you know that a school patrols an area heavily you should expect such occasions to occur from time to time. If you can, contact the head of security and tell them that you need them to stay out of area X until such and such time or date. You don't have to be specific about addresses or exactly what you are working on. That is not why or what I need to know. I just need you to tell me that you need me to stay away so that I don't call and send a uniformed officer to an address right next to where you are working because that doesn't help your undercover operations at all. Also, it would keep me, an unarmed guard, out of a potentially dangerous situation. If we work together, we can let you continue catching bad guys and we can continue keeping our campuses safe and out of your way.