The budget for police and dispatcher services at Long Beach City College is currently operating month to month, as the Board of Trustees did not approve the amended budget at their November meeting.
In June, the Board of Trustees voted to review their $3.3 million contract with the Long Beach Police Department.
The campus police force consists of four sworn police officers, a police lieutenant, and then 13 professional service officers, who can make private citizen’s arrests but are unable to make arrests like a police officer, according to Kevin Stinson, acting manager of the Long Beach Police Department at Long Beach City College.
Officers working on campus do receive some college-specific training, said Stinson, although not all officers participate.
Police have had a presence in American public schools since the 1950s, with colleges and universities establishing campus police in the 1960s amid mass student protests that often turned violent.
During the 2011–12 school year, 68% of four-year schools with 2,500 or more students used sworn police officers to provide law enforcement services on campus, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
After nationwide protests erupted in June following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, schools across the country began to reevaluate their ties to city police departments as public opinion of police decreased to record lows.
“Confidence in the police fell five points to 48%, marking the first time in the 27-year trend that this reading is below the majority level,” wrote Megan Brenan for “Gallup,”
Notably, among Republicans, confidence in the police rose seven points to 82%, while it dropped six points to 28% among Democrats, according to “Gallup.”
“I think ‘Defund the police’ has been taken as if it’s a slogan, as if it’s a radical slogan. ‘Defund the police’ is a policy,” said Annahita Mahdavi, associate professor of human services, addiction studies at Long Beach City College.
“Defund the police” entails reallocating money for policing into programs for rehabilitation, mentally ill, the homeless, and other social services, said Mahdavi.
Mahdavi said that for an establishment that is recognized to be built on the systems of institutionalized racism, calls to defund the police do not mean to completely abolish the police department.
“Unfortunately, people in opposition always try to label people with things like ’radical’ or ‘socialist’ … to literally change the meaning of what you’re trying to deal with. But as a policy, I don’t think anybody wants to abolish a police department,” she said.
“I think we all need to know that we can call the police department, and we can tell them that, ‘hey there’s a robbery going on,’ or ‘someone is in my house’ … we’re talking about changing policy. We’re talking about not allowing police officers to kill people in the daylight as they have been,” said Mahdavi.
Mahdavi said that more transparency is needed from the college regarding the police budget.
“What is the $3 million? Where’s it going? And why don’t we have more programs?” said Mahdavi.
“I think it should be a town hall. I think it should be an open discussion,” she said.
Jimenez recounted a recent Board of Trustees meeting, where the officer present was unable to disclose how many incidents in 2019 involved people of color.
“…Around racial profiling, like, wasn’t there full discussion? Why is that continuing to be hidden? This is the discussion, the topic of today … we need to be aware, more aware now than ever, we need to be a progressive community. And this is how we do it by small institutions right here,” said Jimenez.
“In order to, like, fix the problem, we need to be real about the problem that’s at hand. And I can’t assume that there is a problem, I only asked the question, but they didn’t have the information. So I mean, we don’t know what the actual statistics are. But, you know, having transparency, I think is super important for a school,” she said.
Board of Trustees President Vivian Malauulu said that she has only heard from teachers requesting to not remove police, and she was not aware of any concerns regarding a police presence on campus.
As for students who may feel unsafe with Long Beach Police Department officers on campus, Malauulu said that those students should reach out to her.
Amid the pandemic, for the Associated Student Body, which acts as a student voice on campus for administrative decisions, determining student opinion has been a challenge, said Jimenez.
She said that concern has stimulated her to create a project around building a better and more accessible website for the Associated Student Body.
“One of the ways I want to hear the student voice on a stronger level, is creating ways on the website where students can know what the Board is discussing at upcoming meetings, and then email me or cast their own info … (to) get the student voice in a more efficient way,” Jimenez said.
Prior to the pandemic, the Associated Student Body previously relied largely on tabling events to gather student opinion, but Jimenez said this was also not entirely effective.
Jimenez said that she requested a survey to be sent out on the cabinet level, “But it’s really a work in progress,” and the potential survey could not be uploaded onto the official website until next semester.
Jimenez said this was “really unfortunate, because now I’m really relying on just my cabinet to give me their ideas about how they feel about campus police.”
To connect with students, Stinson said that the police have made outreach efforts such as presentations, oftentimes facilitated by instructors for their classes, and questions-and-answer sessions with students prior to the pandemic, although efforts have stalled following the transition to remote learning.
To Black students in particular, Stinson said that the police have been asked to participate in a couple of events previously for “usually Black, African American, young men that come from all over the city … they’ll have like a presentation, and they’ll have different segments of the society, you know, successful business people, politicians and whatnot. And they’re trying to mentor them. We’ve taken part in that.“
Regarding if Stinson believes the police should do more outreach with Black students, he said, “It can’t hurt to get your message out or get your message across, especially if they had a request, of course.”
Following the pandemic, Stinson said he would like to see specific outreach between the police and the Black Student Union and other Black students on campus with open communication and dialogue.
As a replacement to campus police, Jimenez said that security guards are a worthwhile consideration, although entirely removing police from campus may also send a potentially harmful message.
“I think if we were to literally say, okay, campus police, like you have to not be on campus ever, then we’re telling the community, ‘let’s not associate ourselves with them.’ But then that creates more misunderstanding, there’s less like communication. And I think it’s important for police officers to have the opportunity to have that bridge,” Jimenez said.
“For right now, the way I’m seeing change is that it’s not as difficult as it seems like if we have to make a change, because it’s way too expensive to keep police, and their line of work could be used in such a better way.”
As for considering security guards as a solution, Jimenez said, “I would not be opposed to considering that because it’s efficient. First of all, it’s cost effective. Second of all, it gets the same work done. Third of all, the police are being put in situations where they can be better suited … out in the community.”
As for the feasibility of replacing armed police on campus with unarmed security guards, Mahdavi said first gun laws would need to be modified.
“It’s hard to say, because we live in a country that guns are free. And, you know everybody owns guns … The way our country’s gun laws are, we definitely need to reform. But we’ve had these debates before. And the question always comes up, that if there was an intruder with a gun … I don’t really like to see campus police walking around with big guns … We still need more debate, because things are intertwined. If you’re going to change a policy that we don’t want to see our police officers with guns walking around, or looking like National Guards, and as if they’re going to war, a war to the Middle East, that’s how they look like, we also need to change the gun laws here and not allow everybody to carry a gun with them as if they’re carrying a bag of candy.”
Mahdavi said, “So I feel like in order for us to deweaponize the police, first we need to deweaponize civilians as well.”
“There’s this sense of fear when they’re around us. That’s completely understandable. I’ve had that myself. And I’ve even mentioned that in the Board of Trustees meeting, like, I have no reason to be afraid, right? But I’m walking around automatically feeling defensive and intimidated. And that just goes to show like there’s something about police in the communities that need work on, like, how to connect with people. There’s a lot of work and healing that needs to be done there,” said Jimenez.
While Stinson said that this dynamic between the police and the public is nothing new, he said the needs of the community have also changed.
“Because you see what happened with George Floyd? There’s no justification for that. You can’t explain that away.”
“The community sees that, or the world sees that, then there’s a need for things to be explained. And then if there’s a problem that needs to be addressed,” he said.
Regarding the “Defund the Police” movement, Stinson said, “As the police officer, of course you’re gonna say ‘Wait a minute,’ you know … But then also as a person, you say, ‘Well, I can understand where they may want to do things a little bit differently.”
California Department of Justice statistics show that the Long Beach Police Department killed or seriously injured people at a significantly higher rate than other large California cities, however the police department responded by saying the statistics were flawed due to lack of transparency of other departments, according to Jeremiah Dobruck for “Long Beach Post.”
California Department of Justice statistics demonstrate that “ … among the dozen biggest cities in California, only Bakersfield and Riverside police killed or seriously injured people at a higher rate than the LBPD. Looking solely at fatal police encounters in the biggest cities, only Anaheim police killed civilians at a higher rate than officers in Long Beach,” wrote Dobruck.
As a response to the Black Lives Matter protests in June, the Long Beach Police Department eliminated the use of the carotid restraint, which Stinson said officers were receptive to.
Some divisions were also eliminated, said Stinson.
Stinson said he does believe that some funds should be reallocated to different resources to benefit the community, such as having specific mental health professionals to assist with relevant calls.
He said he would like to see the lines of communication opened between the school and the police.
Stinson said that the need for policing has not decreased since the pandemic, when the number of people on campus have been drastically reduced.
As far as how Long Beach City College is addressing the issue, Jimenez said that ultimately, “This is a big decision that is going to be made. And it’s going to sway the way that we are answering the Black Lives Matter movement. This is showing how we support our community and what you know, what are we trying to say to our community? And it’s not like, oh, if they don’t take out the police, they don’t support Black Lives Matter. It’s more of like, do they have a constructed idea of why they made the choice that they made? Do they have all the resources? Do they have all the opinions to make the choice that they think that that’s something that they need? Because they serve the students at the end of the day.”
For students who would like to offer their thoughts on campus policing, Jena Jimenez can be reached at studenttrustee@lbcc.edu.