Police at Indiana University of Pennsylvania have been an active part of the university. This is good because security and safety are very important.
However, I feel that police are way more concerned with harassment
of students at the university rather than keeping the town safe. I always thought that police were here to make sure everything is running smoothly, the law is being respected and people are being safe.
Coming to this university I have realized that police would rather give underages, DUIs or simply catch a student doing something wrong, than protect them.
Whatever happened to being innocent until proven guilty?
In my experience at IUP I have noticed that officers are extremely rude to students.
They assume people are at fault or in the wrong, and would prefer it. One night my friend drove me back to my dorm from her house. On the way there she got pulled over and was asked to take a breathalyzer, simply because it was “thirsty Thursday” and he was looking for students driving
drunk.
My friend had not had anything to drink and would never get behind the wheel drunk.
I thought this was an unfair reason
for her to be pulled over, especially
because he even told us the reason was “thirsty Thursday,” He seemed disappointed to have not been able to give her a DUI.
I happened to to be moving out of my room the day of the huge blizzard.
I was trying to load up my car fast before the blizzard got worse. I put my flashers on while I was gathering
my stuff together and when I came back to my car, there was a cop behind my car. He said he called a tow truck to tow me because I was parked there just past 15 minutes. The cop was nothing but rude to me for no reason at all.
I apologized and was very respectful
to him, and he seemed to think he had the right to treat me like I was some sort of criminal. I didn’t appreciate
this, because I have never done anything to deserve that treatment and have absolutely no record.
From my point of view, this is how most cops are and these are their only intentions.
They want to catch you doing something wrong and seem to get some kind of pleasure out of it. I would like to see more officers actually
making a difference here, rather than making students’ lives more hectic than they already are.
— Lauren Miller
L.E.Miller5@iup.edu
Letter to the Editor
Published: Friday, March 19, 2010
Updated: Friday, March 19, 2010
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