Some Department of Public Safety officers have started to carry pepper spray and batons and wear protective vests, and DPS hopes to have all officers trained and equipped by the end of March.
The University committed to the initiative at the end of August 2007 after requests by DPS officers for the equipment, according to University spokesperson Julie Green Bataille.
“The overall goal is to see that we have a safe campus,” Vice President of Student Affairs Todd Olson said. “This just helps to [en]sure that we have as safe and secure a campus as possible.”
Bataille stressed that officers would have to undergo “extensive training” before being allowed to carry the equipment.
The certification program, which began in December 2007, requires 24 hours of training—16 hours of basic training followed by eight hours of advanced training—and is run through the D.C. Consortium of Schools Law Enforcement Academy.
As part of the training, all officers will have to be sprayed with pepper spray in order to understand its effects.
A few DPS officers will complete an additional 40-hour training course to become certified trainers themselves.
Student Safety Advisory Board member Max O’Neill (COL ‘08) said that although the board did consider the possibility that DPS officers might misuse or overuse the pepper spray and batons, they believed proper training would prevent any misuse.
O’Neill also said he predicts the new equipment will improve the image of DPS and attract higher-caliber officers.
“A lot of it will be the perception that students have of DPS as an actual police force rather than a party patrol, and also the confidence DPS officers have knowing they have weapons for their defense,” he said.
Tyler Spalding (SFS ‘08), another SSAB member, said that new equipment will bring DPS “up to a level that most universities around the nation are at.”
Nearby in Virginia, George Mason University’s campus police are equipped not only with pepper spray and batons but also with guns.
George Mason Press Secretary Dan Walsch said the weapons served mostly as deterrents and that in his 20 years at the University he could not recall any instance in which the weapons were put to use.
Public safety officers at American University are also trained to use pepper spray and batons.
Director of Public Safety Michael McNair said that with the proper training, pepper spray and batons could be “excellent” tools for campus police officers.
“Basically any training should include the ‘use of force continuum’ concept where the amount of force used by the officer is only that force which is necessary to effect an arrest or subdue the subject,” McNair wrote in an e-mail.
“Even though batons are non-lethal weapons, they can be used to strike potentially lethal blows. Therefore the training [is] needed to teach when lethal force is authorized or justifiable.”
McNair said the only drawback was the cost of the weapons and the training.
Bataille did not have estimates of how much the new equipment and training would cost Georgetown.
Director of Public Safety Darryl Harrison declined to comment and Vice President of University Safety Rocco DelMonaco was unavailable for comment.
