Campus police or university police in the United States and Canada are sworn police or peace officers employed by a college or university to protect the private or public property of the campus and surrounding areas and the people who live, work, and visit it. In instances where they are not technically police officers, they are often known as campus safety or campus security.
Canada
Campus police in Canada are sworn in as peace officers – giving them full police powers on their respective campuses to enforce the Criminal Code, as well as local bylaws. Peace officers in Canada do not typically carry firearms like their police counterparts, so campus officers only carry a baton, pepper spray, handcuffs and a radio. Protective vests, similar to those of police, are worn. Notable examples of campus peace officer services include the University of Toronto Campus Safety Division, McMaster University Security Service, and the University of Alberta Protective Services.
In Ontario, the term of 'campus police' is prohibited under Bill 68 of the Community Safety and Policing Act, 2019. If anyone other than a police service, including a peace officer service, wishes to address themselves as 'police', they must seek exemption from the province.
United States
In the 2004-05 school year, 87% of college campuses had sworn officers with the power to arrest, and 90% of these departments were armed.
92% of campus police departments are responsible for handling their own dispatching, which means that they are completely self-sufficient agencies. They do not rely on the local law enforcement agencies around them to take on their responsibilities.
Some secondary public school districts maintain their own police, such as the Los Angeles School Police Department, the Miami-Dade County Public Schools Police Department and the New York City Police Department School Safety Division.
History in the United States
While modern conceptions and roles campus policing are relatively new, their introduction into US colleges and universities is not. Yale University is accredited with creating the first university police force in 1894, with the initial function of the removal and policing of homeless people from the university premises. However, the creation of the police force at Yale did not precipitate the implementation of nationwide campus police forces and the proliferation of modern campus policing was still not yet feasible. The next few decades of campus policing mainly occurred through the designation of police officers on universities to serve as watchmen. Under this model, officers served more or less as custodial figures whose responsibilities consisted of keeping a watchful eye over university property in the event of any defacements due to events such as water damage, fire, and other external threats. The 1950’s and 1960’s ushered in a shift from the custodial and “watchman” models of campus policing which emphasized the protection of property, and directly contributed to the shaping of campus police into more proactive and modern policing departments.