UnsafeU Corrections to Jackson Brown’s August 24th Opinion Editorial in The Daily Utah Chronicle

On August 24th, The Daily Utah Chronicle (the Chrony) published an article written by Jackson Brown, which made the case for abolishing UUPD and having SLCPD take over jurisdiction. In this article, Jackson Brown makes the following claim:

“Shifting from their previous position of simply defunding the campus police, Unsafe U now pushes the notion of no police presence on campus at all. Without any traditional replacement in mind, Unsafe U believed most campus crimes could be managed through alternative methods such as counseling and legal aid.”

We informed the Chrony and Jackson Brown that the claims made about UnsafeU in this piece were factually inaccurate. We were never consulted or interviewed for this piece — a basic set of fact checking that should have occurred for any reputable publication. The Chrony, specifically Jackson Brown and the Editor-in-Chief, Sheely Edwards, refused to make the corrections to fact for this article, claiming that they believe this factual inaccuracy was “fair.” Below, we publish the full text of an email interview we did with the Chrony on June 12, 2020 regarding our organization’s position on police abolition.

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August 2020 interview with the Chrony

In the comments of the Instagram post calling for the abolishment of UUPD, UnsafeU clarified that the U would fall under another police department’s jurisdiction, however, in the Medium post, one of the demands include not creating contracts with any other police department or security firms. Can you clarify UnsafeU’s stance on this?

Thanks so much for this question — we appreciate the chance to additionally clarify. The intent behind this particular demand is that we don’t want to *increase* contracted security services or *add* policing presence on campus. The best way to think about this is that we are essentially asking the university to not proactively increase policing and surveillance on campus after dissolving UUPD. If the UUPD were to be dissolved, we would be covered under another policing jurisdiction, which would allow them to respond to and investigate crimes on university property. We would advocate for this to be the SLCPD due to both geographic location as well as their expertise with IPV and sexual assault investigations compared other options such as Unified Police Department or the State Troopers. Another important thing to note is that if the U dissolved UUPD this would probably need to involve a transition plan of some sort to transfer responsibilities. It’s unlikely that an immediate announcement of dissolving UUPD would also mean that the agency is instantaneously dissolved.

We also want to be clear that it would not be appropriate for security services such as Academi or other private security firms to be contracted. There is almost no way to hold private security firms to accountability or transparency standards, a reality which runs completely counter to our core values as an organization. If we must have any form of policing, we want to ensure it is a public entity that can be held accountable by citizens.

Our members hold various stances with regards to the SLCPD ranging from extreme reform to full abolition, and we are working to establish a stance on that. However, we feel that it is important to focus first and foremost on the police department that directly impacts the lives and safety of our campus — UUPD. Over time, strong investment in social services will allow us to reduce our overall reliance on policing and the carceral system. We are cognizant and realistic that complete abolition is not a process that happens over night or without complete community buy-in.

If the department is abolished and the U cannot make contracts with other departments or security firms, how does this affect hospital, museum, and library security?

This would not be affected, given that SLCPD would have jurisdiction to respond and investigate when necessary. It’s important to emphasize that the need for hospital, museum, and library security services to call for policing assistance is extremely rare. In the case of hospitals, internal staff are often better trained than police officers on safe restraint and de-escalation techniques that keep both medical care providers and patients safe.

If the department is abolished and the U cannot make contracts with other departments or security firms, how are perpetrators of serious crime on campus held accountable?

Again, we are advocating that the U not make any further contracts. If the UUPD is abolished, our campus would fall under the jurisdiction of another police agency, likely the SLCPD. Victims and survivors of crimes like IPV, rape, and sexual assault would be able to file a police report and have a police investigation conducted through SLCPD, if they choose. Active shooters would still have a police response.

On that note, violent crime within or inflicted upon our community is rare, but in many instances has been improperly handled by the UUPD. Preventative measures to some of the most serious crimes have either not been taken at all or were lacking in their efforts. The most important aspect, however, to abolishing the police department is our renewed ability to prevent crime and violence through funding community resources. Restorative justice would be one conversation we could have, and another would be what safety measures can we take now that can make a legitimate (research-based) difference for our students.

Additionally, for cases like IPV, rape, and sexual assault, there is well-established research that the police are rarely the first call victims or survivors in these cases make. One big initiative that we would push immediately following the dissolution of UUPD is setting up a “411” type of number that students could call where they would be provided multiple options for situations like IPV. This would allow victims and survivors to have more agency in making the decision that is most appropriate for them to receive help.

By promoting campus community self-governance and investing in care (e.g. changing our bus system to more of a SafeBus model, increasing funds for, and thus access to, the Center for Student Wellness, and establishing unarmed crisis intervention teams across campus) we can start addressing mental health issues, IPV and DV rates, and other crimes and violence committed by members of our community.

Because the U is not isolated from our outside community, to get at the root issue we, of course, will have to work at the city and state levels. We believe that by addressing the policing issues on our campus and setting an example of safety without police at the U, we can start having those conversations.

Can you justify UnsafeU’s claims that ChenWei might be alive today if the UUPD had been dissolved and other resources had been made available?

We want to be clear that we aren’t trying to make predictions in our article. The point brought across here is that the UUPD did not and could not have prevented this horrible murder from happening. No police department could have.

For many folks who are socialized as white, we are taught from early ages to depend on police for help. Having a mindset of “we are safe because there are police” often means that we don’t take time to consider other ways that we can actually make our community safe. This is one of the issues with having a highly visible police department. We become less aware and maybe even less concerned with the vulnerabilities in our safety efforts on campus. Our intent was not to say that the UUPD caused ChenWei’s death, but rather that there were other ways that we could have prevented this sort of crime from happening to a student on our campus if we were considering safety measures other than relying on police presence.

An additional point on surveillance tech:

We also want to take a quick second to clarify what folks seem to be misunderstanding about surveillance technology. “Surveillance technology” is a very broad term that can encompass very similar video cameras to AI predictive policing. While we are in support of maintaining video surveillance, we want to be extremely cautious about when and how surveillance technology is used on campus. For example, we have several thousand cameras throughout the University of Utah properties. Only a small fraction of these cameras are registered in accordance with university policy with centrally housed data. One of the first steps we think is necessary in this regard is ensuring those video devices get registered. This will ensure that the video surveillance data stays in house and does not feed into third-party policing technology. It will also ensure that this data is only accessed when necessary for safety or investigation reasons.

Although Banjo was an extreme version of what can go wrong with AI and policing, this is unfortunately far more ubiquitous in this industry than most know. Clearview AI is another company that has significant ties to white nationalist movements. Chief Safety Officer Marlon Lynch has already stated that they plan to avoid use of third party technology for safety, such as Clearview and Banjo, and that any consideration will involve a lengthy and comprehensive set of public hearings on any considered projects. We would like the University of Utah to make a more formal commitment to policies, however.