It goes without saying that students should not have to fear the police who are employed to protect them. Kofi Adu-Brempong’s incident is surely a moment the University Police Department should learn from. But the student organizations calling for the end of the Critical Incident Response Team are clearly missing the point.
It serves a clear and defined purpose for moments of crisis. Without an incident to justify its need, it may seem dangerous, but the Student Body would be better served to call for reform rather than totally abandoning a necessary component of campus security. The university and the Student Body must come together to call attention to the lack of training that CIRT members undergo.
As Minch Minchin’s article in Wednesday’s Alligator noted, the CIRT officers receive no more than rifle training. They are, for lack of a better word, super-charged officers without further training. It’s this lack of training that leads to the incompetence that some of your readers note. But incompetence is no excuse to create further flaws in campus security.
