The differences between Campus Police and the city of Raleigh police force go beyond where they work. When it comes to the campus police force, officers often have more training and qualifications than other police officers in North Carolina, according to campus police chief, Jack Moorman.
Because NC State has a lot of specialized facilities on campus, such as the engineering facilities, officers receive specialized training to respond to incidents that municipal police might not have the training for.
In addition, many research-based facilities have partnerships with outside companies and facilities that also require specialized police training.
“We have the USDA on Centennial Campus and some other private partnerships as well,” said Frank Brinkley, patrol operations major. “Just because of the nature of what we are doing, we have to be careful with our responses. Some of our qualifications are at a lot higher standards than some municipalities as far as what we do to keep our certification.”
In addition, Campus Police officers are paid higher wages than municipal police officers and state troopers. This is due to the Classification and Compensation Department in Human Resources’ program Career Banding. This program bases pay and compensation off of factors such as performance, training, competency and development.
The Campus Police officers are state employees and follow the provided scales by which the employees can be paid. Campus police officers have the same powers and responsibilities as local police, with the addition of campus-related services they respond to.
“In addition to their duties as a police officer, however, they also serve in an administrative role for the university and can make referrals to the Office of Student Conduct and participate in other administrative functions,” Brinkley said.
However, both campus and municipal police complete the same Basic Law Enforcement Training.
One of the main parts that NC State makes sure of is that the Campus Police’s officers are trained for crisis intervention.
“We participate in the Wake County Crisis Intervention team training, and we have additional training with responding to students and individuals on campus who might be in crisis and getting them assistance,” Brinkley said. “We have a strong emphasis on assistance, we aren’t completely about showing up and just throwing someone in jail— we want to get the right assistance to the right person to help individuals.”
The Campus Police Department is also accredited with the Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) and the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA).
As for a day-to-day basis, Brinkley and the patrol officers around campus respond to a variety of calls and duties.
“One day for me, I could be responding to something like them needing more people for campus issues, and the next day it could just be office work,” Brinkley said. “For patrol officers, they respond to a variety of calls as well. One minute they could be responding to an emergency call, and the next minute they could be helping someone unlock their car door.”
One of the most common crimes on campus is larceny. In 2014, there were 466 reported cases of larceny on campus. The next highest offense was burglary with 38 total offenses and motor vehicle theft with 11 offenses.
Campus Police also has an online crime log as well as an interactive crime map available on their website for the general public.
Micaela Ascolese, a freshman studying criminology, said that although Campus Police may hold a certain stigma that differs from person to person, they are overall very helpful.
“A lot of people don’t like the police whereas other people trust the police,” Ascolese said. “I think Campus Police are very helpful with what they do every day with the police escort service and walk-ins if you need help. They helped us a lot with the planning and execution of run dance glow, so they are very involved with the local campus, and they really take students into account when they do their work.”