SUNY Adirondack’s officials have decided to spend more than $100,000 on stuff the college does not need. This stuff includes body armor, guns, Tasers and body cameras for its campus officers. The decision to arm and armor officers comes after research was done by Anne Marie Somma, vice president for administrative services, and a presentation was made to trustees. Somma talked about what officers had recommended, what other colleges have done and which weapons are considered most effective. What she didn’t talk about was the need for campus officers to wear bulletproof vests and carry lethal weapons. She didn’t bring up any history of violent crimes committed on campus, when a responding officer would have had use for a gun. She didn’t talk about the likelihood of an armed intruder or active shooter on a small college campus like SUNY Adirondack’s. The main justification for arming the officers appears to be an unscientific survey done of the college community. Even if this meaningless survey had been valid, it would have been a poor tool for making this decision. The percentage of students and teachers who want campus officers to carry guns is irrelevant. It’s the need for the guns that matters. Are campus officers likely to encounter situations when they will need a gun? Pause Current Time 0:00 / Duration Time 0:00 Stream TypeLIVE Loaded: 0%Progress: 0%0:00 Fullscreen 00:00 Mute No, they’re not. It’s very unlikely. But it’s telling that this decision was made on the basis of impressions and popular opinion. That’s the way it is with guns in America. They have become the default solution to any worry about the possibility of danger. Guns are not magic wands, but we see them that way. Wave the magic gun in the air and you will get the safety and security you desire. Listen to what Somma said in her presentation to the college trustees: “It is one method of thinking that drawing a weapon itself is enough to get someone to comply.” Just wave the magic gun and trouble evaporates. The bitter irony is that the proliferation of guns throughout American society has made us all less safe. Toddlers playing with their parents’ guns kill themselves or their siblings. Spouses kill each other in moments of rage. Fearful homeowners shoot people who are not intruders. Road rage degenerates into murder. People whose minds and souls are twisted obtain machines that allow them to kill scores of human beings in a matter of minutes, and they do it. The other thought that guides decisions like the one at SUNY Adirondack is that they have no downside. Even if the guns are never used, under this way of thinking, they’re worth the money as a precaution, like fire extinguishers. But the guns have a downside — the possibility an officer will make a mistake and commit an unjustified shooting. This happens, as anyone knows who watches the news. Officers who patrol dangerous neighborhoods, where people carry guns and use them in crimes, need to be armed themselves. But officers who patrol bucolic campuses where very little crime and even less violence occurs —campuses like SUNY Adirondack’s — don’t need the capacity to kill.
courtesy poststar.com

“Officers who patrol dangerous neighborhoods, where people carry guns and use them in crimes, need to be armed themselves. But officers who patrol bucolic campuses where very little crime and even less violence occurs —campuses like SUNY Adirondack’s — don’t need the capacity to kill.” – Will Doolittle in Spending money on unnecessary weaponry [via poststar.com]

 

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68 COMMENTS

    • Students have no rights. Students need to “listen and believe” and have rape accusations leveled against them for thoughtcrimes…and then they need to give us $200,000 that they don’t have right now and might never have, but we’ll get a check from Mommy Navient for it in their name.

    • He words need to be preserved. Some where there is tape of the VA Tech university president saying he was proud to have eliminated weapons from all campus police less than a year before the mass shooting that happened there.

  2. Anyone willing to be a human shield for $30K/year? Anyone?
    Great early retirement opportunities should you merely be maimed.

    • They don’t need firearms to write parking tickets, tow cars, and steal booze from the students. Citizens should be armed, not government employees.

      • “The bitter irony is that the proliferation of guns throughout American society has made us all less safe. Toddlers playing with their parents’ guns kill themselves or their siblings. Spouses kill each other in moments of rage. Fearful homeowners shoot people who are not intruders. Road rage degenerates into murder. People whose minds and souls are twisted obtain machines that allow them to kill scores of human beings in a matter of minutes, and they do it.” Why didn’t her article mention the people shot by the police in drug busts at the wrong address, SWAT operations that are result of phony 911 calls, people stopped for broken tail lights or going a little too fast, mentally ill people having a really bad day or the dogs shot because somebody just gets pissed off when they aren’t shown the proper deference.

        • Ummm, because government employees are special, and they help the government keep all us rabble under control, so they can carry on with turning this nation into another utopian hell hole?

  3. Everyone needs the capacity to kill. And hopefully never the need to use it. That’s how deterrence works.

  4. Looking into those eyes is like looking into a pair of black holes.

    Then again, when I was in school the cops did stupid stuff like steal electronics and leave their Glocks in the men’s room. Then our police chief had the balls to deny us our right to campus carry saying it would “send the wrong message” to the ghetto surrounding the campus, and deny dorm-dwellers the ability to check guns into the police stations for safe-keeping in clear violation of school policy.

      • Black sunken eyes, yellow teeth, I believe this man is evil, and is being rotted from the outside in 😲. Liberal I will sell students lives for money, and a chance to grandstand piece of garbage regardless.

    • Campus cops don’t need guns. Why faced with a dangerous situation why can’t they just call the regular police and wait up to an hour or two like the rest of us?

  5. “It’s the need for the guns that matters. Are campus officers likely to encounter situations when they will need a gun?
    No, they’re not. It’s very unlikely.”
    But those few times where they may need them, they’re really going to want them. Just like any other person.
    By the way, is this guy’s name really Will Doolittle? Cause if so, that really answers a lot of questions one might have about him.

    • Best reason I can think of for campus cops to be armed is so they won’t stand out embarrassingly when all students are armed.

    • better ditch my seat belt and smoke alarms, never needed the damned things yet! What outstanding logic from our enlightened academia.

  6. Has anyone found this Bill of Needs these people keep referring to? Was it a memo posted in the break room? Maybe an email that got sent to my spam folder or something?

  8. Just before I checked TTAG I was thinking about the time I worked for Campus Security and somebody tried to run me down with their truck.

  10. Has this fucker ever really looked around college campuses?? Once you leave those gates it’s friggin downtown Baghdad out there.

  11. Two problems with unarmed campus security:
    1. It will attract homicidal loonies like dawgshit attracts flies.
    2. The first time an attack occurs and people are killed or maimed, the resulting negligence lawsuits will bankrupt the institution.

    • 1. Let students carry

      2. Is a bankrupt university a bad thing? The vast majority of them are worthless anyway, or at least the vast majority are 90% worthless

  12. Yeah, never need them. Wait, what… a student last year at Univ. Of Texas attacked other students with a Bowe knife, killing one. Nah, never need them. However, they need to trained in use of non-lethal force options and de-escalation techniques.

    • I saw a security guard at my local hospital a while ago. Had me laughing my ass off. Dude looked like a tweaker, his arms were pure bone and his uniform hung off him like a coat hanger. He had a shirt that said, “security” and a radio. So, what, in any situation that’s gonna require more than kind words, he’s just gonna call the cops right? I’m sorry, couldn’t anyone call the cops? What a loser….

  15. “Officers who patrol dangerous neighborhoods, where people carry guns and use them in crimes, need to be armed themselves. But officers who patrol bucolic campuses where very little crime and even less violence occurs —campuses like SUNY Adirondack’s — don’t need the capacity to kill.”

    ^ This is just too stupid for words.

  16. Yesterday I was searching for a word to describe the mentality of Mr. Doolittle. After a lot of hard work and help from other TTaG commenters, I decided upon the description, “delusional quixotic idealism”. That term describes Mr. Doolittle.

    The rest of us, who operate in the real world, will be armed, thank you very much.

  17. There’s no such thing as rape or assault at SUNY, because we don’t allow victims to file police reports…if we accepted reports of violent crime, people would think our campus isn’t safe.

  18. “There’s No Need for College Campus Police to be Armed…”

    That’s true, until it’s not.

    99.9% of the time it’s true. How much do we care about the .1%? If the .1% happens, will the same people that don’t care about it today suddenly start caring and wanting to write “common sense gun control” laws that won’t do anything?

    • Since you broached the topic, here is a parallel example that illustrates the insanity of Mr. Doolittle’s mentality:

      The campus water supply has fluoride so you do not ever have to brush your teeth or floss on campus. And you do not have to worry about brushing or flossing off campus either because dentists off campus have the tools to fix cavities in your teeth.

  20. I support students and campus police being armed. Gun Free Zones get shot to pieces whenever a lunatic on drugs or disgruntled student plays out their macabre fantasy.

    Campus police douchebaggery is a separate issue.

  21. That is the most ignorant, and just plain stupid statement I have ever heard. This guy is clueless. Does he think dangerous crime can never happen on a college campus? At the University of Texas at Austin, in 2010, a college student fired shots on campus with a AK-47. Fortunately he only killed himself, but could have killed many. In 2015 a young female was raped and murdered on the same campus. In the spring of 2017, a young male student was stabbed to death at lunchtime, on the UT Austin campus. Several others were stabbed, but survived. Just a couple of months ago, a student at Texas Tech University arrested for DWI, pulled a gun inside the Texas Tech Campus Police Department and shot to death a Texas Tech Police Officer. There is no force field or plastic bubble protecting college campuses from violence. Yes, college campus police need guns. Only a fool would say otherwise.

  24. If campus police need to be armed, so do the students, staff and visitors.

    If they are the crime-free utopias they tend to claim…. then they (the police) have no excuse for carrying guns. (All citizens and legal residents should still have freedom of choice, of course.)

    Right?

  25. You’ve got to know you’re screwed up when even California state colleges and universities disagree – all of them have armed police.

    • No, but guns only make things worse! If you give the campus cops guns, then you have to give rapists guns! /sarc

      (No shit, this is only a slightly paraphrased version of an actual argument. I believe this was reported on TTaG, actually, but some dumbass snowflake bitch on some campus a while ago actually said that if you let the plebes carry guns then you have to give the rapists guns too. Don’t think about that for too long or your brain cells will start to commit mass suicide)

  27. SOMEBODY needs guns on campus.

    The twit in question seems to have forgotten the recent “knife and gun” jihadi at Ohio State… nevermind Charles Whitman.

    Let students arm themselves in their own defense.

    Only Holocaust deniers surpass anti-gun cultists in pure stupidity and malice… and not by much.

  28. Like anyone realistically concerned about their own defense, the campus cops realize that they are dealing with situations that aren’t very likely but have severe consequences if they do occur. The cops, like most readers of TTAG, carry guns to avoid those consequences.

    This “journalist” should also read his own paper, since if he did he might have the insight needed to understand why the campus cops want to be armed and armored. The article, “No. 2: Violent year of murders, shootings”, indicates that the area isnt as bucolic as Mr. Dientes Amarillos thinks it is.

  30. They call their housing “student ghettos” for a reason…….lots of human garbage (mostly on scholarship or affirmative action) on college campuses……”bucolic” is the last word id use to describle a modern college campus.

  32. This college is in upstate NY next to the national forest. I suspect that many of the students and faculty there have shotguns or rifles in the trunk. Don’t know if that is legal in NY but out in the country I doubt any LEO cares. In any event, shootings at rural public colleges have occurred. Many years ago I was an unarmed campus security guard who worked with the armed campus police who had full arrest powers on the campus. They were decent guys and gals. We were in a smaller southern city and had a medical school, so got the usual gang shootings and other assorted social degenerates. We also had a gorgeous female cop who was used as bait for would be rapists and pervs that sleazed in from town. She carried a .357 as did the other cops. Those of us who were in the unarmed jobs were very glad to have the armed ones close by.

  33. This paper and its editorial staff have a history of being anti-gun and rabidly so. In 2008 they got caught trying to lead a FOIL campaign to get the names and addresses of all the pistol permit holders in the three counties of their readership so that they could publish them in an online database. Outrage from the local public and law enforcement forced them to quit, but not before issuing a half hearted explanation.

    http://poststar.com/news/latest/the-post-star-addresses-pistol-permit-controversy/article_1ba7c108-8116-5940-8139-d4ec01e5d55e.html

  34. If only we were all disarmed the violence would go away. Most criminals, at heart, are law abiding. Killers do not mean to kill, society drives them to it. Firearms are evil and make people do evil things. If you defend yourself you are violating the rights of others to attack you. If you think the world is a dangerous place yet accept responsibility for your own safety, then you are paranoid. Why can’t you people accept that as any reasonable people would? Centers for higher learning lead the way for a care free society.

  35. Disagree 100%. Campus Police are just that, Police. In my State meeting the same academy standards. In fact here in PA, some Campus depts are larger many rural & Suburban PD’s. And after Virginia Tech & the Univ. of Texas events; the idea of Unarmed officers is absurd.

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