Crossing the Line

Take a ten-minute walk, and learn something interesting about Harvard and its law enforcement agency.

Begin at Eliot House. If you're a victim of a crime there, the Harvard University Police Department will investigate, and hopefully, arrest your perpetrator.

Walk outside Eliot House and step onto J.F.K. Street. You're now on roads patrolled by the Cambridge Police Department.

Amble a few steps south and drag your foot along the curb of Memorial Drive. You're in the territory of the Massachusetts State Police.

Walk about a hundred yards to the Weeks Footbridge. Cross the small bridge and hop onto the sidewalk on the opposite side--and you're in the Boston Police Department's purview.

That's four separate police agencies, all protecting the crossroads of the world's most powerful university.

But HUPD is different from its partners.

Its 51 officers have police powers as deputy sheriffs in 52 towns and cities in Middlesex and Suffolk counties, giving the department a larger jurisdiction than most every municipal Massachusetts police department.

HUPD, though, is not a municipal police department. Officially, the University claims that its police department is a small part of Harvard, a large private institution.

The University funds, equips and directs the activities of the department. Its chief is directly accountable to Harvard's General Counsel, who, in turn, must answer to Harvard's President.

HUPD's status is virtually unique within the law enforcement community.

Interviews with dozens of Harvard administrators and state and local officials reveal a private institution invested with a great deal of public authority, which it wields without several of the safeguards that public police forces must observe.

HUPD's power to act as a law enforcement agency is derived from three sources.

The first can be found in the annals of Massachusetts state law, under a section that provides for the deputization of campus police officers as "special" state police officers.

The clause conferring rights and privileges, MGL-23C Section 63, states that "Special state police officers....shall have the same power to make arrests as regular police officers for any criminal offense committed in or upon lands or structures owned, used or occupied by such college, university, or other institution."

While the powers given to campus police officers by state law are broad, it dictates severely constrained jurisdiction for officers off-campus.

According to this law, HUPD officers have the full power of state police officers, but only while on property owned by the University that employs them.

But Harvard's property is non-contiguous. The University owns a big patch of property on the Boston side of the Charles River, sizable acreage in Cambridge and buildings scattered across two counties. Its Medical School is in the Longwood area of Boston, and it owns acres of land in Southborough and Hamilton.

Without any additional powers, an HUPD officer crossing the street from Harvard Yard to the Holyoke Center would have no more legal authority to stop a crime in progress (and make the accompanying arrest) than an ordinary citizen.

"[Harvard's properties] are not joined to one another, so an officer traveling from the Kennedy School to Harvard Yard is a person dressed like a police officer, yet has no authority in the absence of a deputy sheriff appointment," says Frank M. Burns, the number two sheriff in Middlesex County.

So in the early 1970s, the University decided to see whether Middlesex and Suffolk counties would agree to deputize its campus police officers.

The three reached agreements that gave HUPD officers broad powers of arrest in the greater Boston area (see map).

In exchange, Harvard agreed to free the sheriff's office from responsibility for any litigation or damages resulting from the actions of HUPD officers.

The agreement is renewed regularly.

"The only reason we have those powers is for the accommodation of the public," says Chief of Police Francis D. "Bud" Riley.

As deputy sheriffs, HUPD officers are "regarded in the law as peace officers with special rights of arrest in certain circumstances," as it is described in an orientation document given to all new deputies in Middlesex County.

A deputy sheriff, like a HUPD officer, may make a warrantless arrest for any "breach of the peace" committed in his presence. The laws of the commonwealth also allow for deputy sheriffs to enter any premise licensed to serve alcohol without a warrant and make an arrest for any violation of any law.

Deputized officers can't officially make regular patrol rounds through the county--and they can't enforce traffic laws.

But based on their powers as deputy sheriffs, HUPD officers could cruise around The Crimson Sports Grille on a Saturday night and round up underage students or arrest the proprietors for selling to students who were underage--if directed to do so by their Harvard employers.

Four years ago, with a Cambridge licensing board official by his side, an officer made the rounds at the Grille. Riley says it hasn't happened again.

In Cambridge proper, it is not often clear where HUPD's jurisdiction ends and the Cambridge Police Department's jurisdiction begins.

Absent clear guidelines about the status of private college police agencies operating in municipal areas, Harvard administrators are often left to define the depth and breadth of the department's authority. They must judge whether HUPD should police private property such as the final clubs, student organizations like the Lampoon or even frequent student haunts like The Crimson Sports Grille.

At the same time, administrators do not work alone. HUPD hashes out jurisdictional details with municipal police departments.

In an interview, Riley said he has standing instructions from the Dean of the College's office not to police the final clubs, but on occasion HUPD will intervene when Harvard administrators perceive a clear interest in HUPD doing so.

Policing the clubs more aggressively "would depend on whether the deans of the College itself recognized that it was a place that they assumed responsibility for," Riley said.

Several years ago, recalls HUPD officer Louis Favreaux, unruly students threw beer bottles on the doorstep of then-Lowell House Master William H. Bossert '59.

At the same party the next year, Bossert, Riley and several HUPD officers situated themselves at the gates of the club.

"It's not Harvard's problem until you piss off a Harvard administrator," Favreaux says.

But the Bossert-story was only the public version of events.

The department stepped up its presence at the club's party for another reason: the previous year, a party-goer followed a first-year student home and attempted a sexual assault.

Then-Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III wrote a letter to the clubs castigating their behavior--and requested that HUPD patrol the same party next year.

At the party the next year, the Cambridge Police Department asked for an officer to check IDs at the door. Since the party was populated by Harvard students, Cambridge patrol sergeants asked HUPD to provide officers of its own, department sources say. But they could not have done so without Epps's approval.

But while HUPD has many of the powers of a municipal police force, it doesn't play by the same rules as city departments.

Because it claims to be a part of a private organization, HUPD is exempt from Massachusetts open records laws that require most police agencies to make incident reports available to the public and press upon request.

HUPD incident reports involving individual students are delivered daily to the appropriate college officials--their senior tutor or assistant dean of freshmen.

But the department claims the prerogative to refuse to provide the same information to students, press and the general public.

Municipal police departments cannot claim this right. Massachusetts police officers in such departments are considered "public officials," and as a result, internal department records and correspondence must be made available to the public upon request. Incident reports--the narrative of an event by the responding officer--are included.

There are exemptions--documents which describe methods and procedures don't usually have to be disclosed if doing so would harm the ability of police to catch criminals. These reports are only made public when they are entered into the public record as part of a court proceeding.

Public information and records laws were enacted around the country in the mid-'70s as part of an effort to restore public confidence in government after the turbulence of Nixon and the Watergate era.

"The spirit of the open records laws was to preserve the public confidence in government by allowing the public to monitor it," says Jarrett T. Barrios '90, a Massachusetts state representative who represents part of Cambridge.

Anne Taylor, Harvard's vice president and general counsel, says the public records act does not apply to her police force.

Though HUPD's mandate is public, it is a part of a private organization, and as a result, the University claims an exemption necessary to protect the privacy of its students, she says.

"There's too much unedited stuff in there that could injure people's privacy rights," Taylor says.

In a ruling last year, the Massachusetts Secretary of State's office, which has jurisdiction over matters of public record, agreed, dismissing a HUPD public records request by a Cambridge resident who alleged that Harvard officers were part of a global conspiracy.

Barrios, whose district encompasses part of Harvard, says the University's exemption belies the spirit of Massachusetts open records laws.

"Someone who is deputized as a state police officer or county sheriff is, for all intents and purposes, a public official, and to deny the public access to their records and actions flies in the face of our public records statutes," he says.

Barrios argues that although HUPD is part of a private institution, its officers, as deputy sheriffs and as state police officers, are themselves public officials and therefore subject to open records laws.

The University, led by its general counsel disagrees.

"They are Harvard police officers," Taylor says when asked if individual officers might be considered public officials. "Deputization does not convert them into public officers, and it does not convert the department into a public agency."

But some law enforcement agents disagree.

"[HUPD officers] are public officials in the sense that [state police officers] are," says Robert J. Bird, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts State Police.

Burns, the sheriff who is second-in-command of the Middlesex County office, says that deputy sheriffs are "for some purposes" public officials, although he said he believed that special deputies were not public officials for the purpose of the public records act--though his own deputies are, indeed, subject to those laws.

When asked in an interview whether HUPD officers were public officials, Riley says "in the sense that they're given public powers, yes."

The issue of HUPD's reluctance to release information has come up before.

Two incidents in February of 1989, where HUPD arrested students but did

not publicly release their names, prompted calls for colleges to publish a

list of police activity within 24 hours, including the names and addresses

of all arrested persons.

Joshua A. Gerstein '91, who was The Crimson's police reporter at the time, led a statewide campaign to have the Massachusetts legislature enact a law requiring the publication of campus police logs.

At the time, Harvard argued that it didn't release the names of students

arrested to avoid embarrassing them.

"If it's not an invasion of privacy to release the name of someone who has

no connection to Harvard, it shouldn't be an invasion to release the name

of someone who has some connection," Gerstein says of his argument back then.

When he began talking with administrators, many agreed with his view--including then-Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III.

"Once they were called on it, they knew it was hard to justify it. There

was a sort of institutional reluctance to release information like this,"

Gerstein remembers.

Gerstein's law was passed by the Massachusetts State Legislature--and Harvard, as an ostensibly private organization, wasn't exempted. Neither were the logs at any other private college or university.

In large part, HUPD has tried hard to make its public power acceptable to the community it polices.

Riley has frequently provided to the public and the press information in police reports about crimes committed on campus, even though Harvard asserts he is not required to do so.

He has always made himself available to reporters and students for any reason.

All complaints about the department and the conduct of its officers, even the most frivolous, receive a complete investigation.

And despite their powers to do so, in practice, HUPD officers rarely operate off-campus. They leave these areas to the myriad of municipal departments that also have authority in Cambridge and Boston.

But the division of power is unofficial.

"The jurisdiction that we have is dependent on what I assign people to do," Riley says.

For the most part, a city or town's police authority is accompanied by public accountability.

New York City police officers can carry guns and make arrests--but its commissioners and inspectors, sergeants and officers are under constant scrutiny.

The media and interest groups can play a watchdog role by questioning police about material within their reports. And voters can decide whether they like the mayor's choice of a police commissioner. There are police review boards in almost every major city.

The buck stops there.

HUPD acknowledges it is different--but claims there are more than enough legal and procedural safeguards in place to ensure the force does most of its work on-campus, where it acts as the security force of a private institution.

"The bottom line is that I want the University police department to police for the University," Riley says.