With the growing concern of gun-culture, it is reasonable to feel unsafe when there are people always locked and loaded on campus mere yards away. This is exactly why AVID set out to interview our campus police.

To begin, both officers, Dew and McAninch, made it clear that their goal is to improve our school and to make our lives safer. With school shootings being listed as an inspiration for officer Dew, they made sure they are very aware of today’s academic environment. An environment that is unfortunately, not as welcoming as it should be.

To combat this, they assured everyone that hesitation will not be a factor in any high-stress situation for any officer on duty. The officers understand that a moments’ hesitation can cause them, or someone else to get severely hurt. They take this so seriously, that hesitating in a dangerous situation can very well get the officer fired.

With growing racial tensions within minority groups toward police officers, some concerns needed to be addressed. AVID made sure not to beat around the bush, as one of the first questions asked was, “Do you believe white privilege exists?¨ The officers promptly responded saying no, white privilege does not exist.

¨A person is a person. We do not evaluate an action based on the skin tone or racial background of a person.¨

When asked further if there was a subconscious bias against minorities, the officers responded with the following:

“The act draws the attention, not the person.”

Finally, the interview was closed off with questions about whether officers get preferential treatment in courtrooms when they are in the wrong. The officers not only denied this, but exclaimed that they usually get treated worse by the law when they do something wrong.

“If you were to commit a crime here, and say leave to another state, you would not really be pursued. However, if an officer were to do the same thing and leave to another state, our station would actually go out and retrieve the officer in question to bring him back here. This is done because officers ‘know better’ and are thus subjected to a higher standard than normal citizens.”