Students at Johns Hopkins University can expect to see a handful of armed police officers for the new university force on campus this fall, said Chief of Police Branville Bard Jr.
The Johns Hopkins Police Department won’t reach its full 100-person staff for a few years, Bard said. But the pool of officers will begin operating at the Homewood, East Baltimore and Peabody campuses under the finalized governing policies released by the department last Wednesday.
Bard said the JHPD will be a “small part of the larger public safety apparatus” at Hopkins.
“The focus of this JHPD is going to be narrow,” he said. “If I wouldn't have sent an armed police officer to a situation prior, then I'm not going to send an armed police officer now.”
Maryland lawmakers gave university leadership the green light to create the armed police force in 2019. Years of campus protests followed — including students chaining themselves to a university building and disrupting town hall meetings.
Bard said the department used the majority of over 800 collected public comments to amend the final policies for the force — all of which is reflected in a disposition report shared on the JHPD website.
“I really think that our policies are based on the themes of procedural and social justice,” Bard said. “It was about doing things the right way and not the fastest way. So we painstakingly tailored our process to incorporate multiple layers of review.”
The policies detail “very narrow parameters” under which officers should use deadly force, and list alternatives to arrest. There are also sections on interacting with minors, queer individuals and people with behavioral health conditions.
But many public comments expressed concern about officers carrying guns on campus – and the increased risk of violence and discrimination.
“I know that increasing the number of guns on campus will absolutely increase the number of gun-related deaths,” one comment reads. “I know that policing disproportionately hurts people of color and other marginalized populations. I know that the best way to prevent crime is to invest in the community, reduce food insecurity, decriminalize drug use and destigmatize treatment, and reduce the number of weapons (including those carried by police) in the community.”
But Bard said Hopkins officers need to be armed for certain situations.
“You're talking about the ability to respond to violence when it impacts us, and it does impact us far too frequently,” he said. “We're also talking about the ability to provide the appropriate response to those low frequency, high impact events like active shooters.”
But officers will also be allowed to carry their weapons while off-duty, Bard said. One public commenter wrote that “allowing officers to carry these deadly weapons at any time/in any context only heightens the danger for civilians and officers alike.”
Several students at the Homewood and East Baltimore campuses earlier this week said they didn’t know enough about the JHPD to comment on it — and a few said they had never heard of the police force at all.
But one graduate student in the Near Eastern Studies department, who preferred to remain anonymous to protect their job in the university writing program, said they “see both sides.”
“I do feel that a lot of students feel unsafe on campus,” the student said. “I think it was a bigger issue a few years ago, because people were talking about racism and policing and things like that. I think a lot of students have kind of checked out by now.”
They said that lack of attention could prove dangerous if it continues.
“If people stopped paying attention 10 years, 15 years down the line, and we stopped getting these updates then maybe it would go in a bad direction,” the student said.
An organizer for Teachers and Researchers United, the Hopkins graduate student union, said in an emailed statement that the group “maintains its organizing commitment against and opposition to the formation of the JHPD.”
“The University’s plans for a private police both pose a violent risk for workplace safety as well as the city of Baltimore at large,” the statement read. “The administration made no effort to engage with our members' concerns in the process of forming the JHPD — from its inception to the development of policies.”
According to the policies, Hopkins officers are only authorized to perform their duties off-campus in specific cases – like when they are pursuing a suspect or are authorized by the mayor to respond during emergencies.
Bard also said the department sought feedback from campus affinity groups before even releasing drafted regulations for public comment.
The policies will be reviewed every two years, he said, with the same opportunity for public feedback.
