1 in 3 Campus Public Safety Officers Need More Less-Lethal Training
Results from Campus Safety’s opinion survey also show that 42% of respondents believe campus police and security officers do not have the right type of lethal and less lethal weapons to appropriately respond to an incident.
This week, Campus Safety is featuring your opinions on weapons. Outliers are explained in the captions below the charts. Charts without captions mean that the results are the same or similar in all three sectors. To see the survey results related to staffing, pay and morale, as well as comments about the overall results, click here.
Your public safety department has enough and the right type of lethal and less-lethal weapons to appropriately respond to an incident.
Should sworn police officers on your campus be armed with…
Hospital and K-12 respondents are the least in favor of their sworn officers having lethal weapons, although 77% and 80% respectively say their officers should carry these weapons. They are also the respondents least likely to favor the use of pepper spray, with 68% and 81% respectively saying their officers should carry pepper spray. On the other hand, university respondents are the most likely to be in favor of all three types of weapons: 85% say their sworn officers should carry lethal weapons; 81% say they should carry stun guns; and 88% say they should carry pepper spray.
Should nonsworn security officers on your campus be armed with…
Universities and hospitals are the respondents most likely to approve of their nonsworn officers carrying pepper spray (53% and 49% respectively), while more than two in five (42%) survey takers from healthcare facilities want their officers to have stun guns.
Your campus’ police and/or security officers receive enough training on handling lethal weapons.
University respondents are by far the most confident with the level of lethal weapons training provided to their officers, with 29% strongly agreeing and 26% agreeing somewhat with the above statement. Hospitals are the least confident, with 50% disagreeing somewhat or strongly with this statement.
Your campus’ police and/or security officers receive enough training on handling less-lethal weapons.
These and other charts can be viewed in the 2013 Campus Safety Yearbook. To download a pdf, click here.
Related Articles:
- CS Survey Part 1: 46% of Campus Public Safety Departments Understaffed
- Less Lethal Force
- Real-World Alternatives to Deadly Force
- ‘How Safe Is Your Campus?’ Survey Results: K-12 Schools and Districts
- Analyzing Less Lethal Options
Photo: TASER
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About the Author
Robin Hattersley, Editor-in-Chief
Robin has been covering the security and campus law enforcement industries since 1998 and is a specialist in school, university and hospital security, public safety and emergency management, as well as emerging technologies and systems integration. She joined CS in 2005 and has authored award-winning editorial on campus law enforcement and security funding, officer recruitment and retention, access control, IP video, network integration, event management, crime trends, the Clery Act, Title IX compliance, sexual assault, dating abuse, emergency communications, incident management software and more. Robin has been featured on national and local media outlets and was formerly associate editor for the trade publication Security Sales & Integration. She obtained her undergraduate degree in history from California State University, Long Beach.
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