IAN DUNCAN AND TALIA RICHMAN ON MAR 19, 2018
SOURCE: MCCLATCHY, SecurityInfoWatch.com
March 18--After a string of 16 gunpoint robberies around Johns Hopkins' main campus in Homewood last fall, university President Ron Daniels began to think the school's force of 1,000 security personnel and the tens of millions of dollars it spends on security each year might not be enough.
Daniels cleared his schedule for two weeks in November, gathered up four aides and traveled across the country to learn how other large, private, urban schools protect their campuses and communities. They visited the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the University of Chicago and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles to ask about their police departments.
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"That was an important experience for us," Daniels told The Baltimore Sun. It made clear, he said, that Hopkins is "dramatically out of step with our peers."
At Daniels' request, the Baltimore delegation to the General Assembly has agreed to introduce legislation that would enable Hopkins to become the first private university in Maryland with its own police department. Uniformed, armed, sworn police officers would patrol Hopkins' university and hospital campuses in Baltimore.
Such departments are common at universities outside Maryland and at public universities in Maryland. The Hopkins plan has the support of Baltimore Police Commissioner Darryl De Sousa and Mayor Catherine Pugh.
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"To the extent these universities have their own police forces, it allows us to take our folks and focus them on the streets and in the neighborhoods," Pugh said.
Others are less positive. Hopkins students have protested the idea, and city and state legislators want more information and more public debate. City Council members have complained that Hopkins went to the state delegation before informing them of the plan.
