University police officers will have the authority to enforce the law outside of campus if a pending bill passes through the Indiana House of Representatives.
If House Bill 1023 passes through the House Ways and Means Committee, police departments on campuses across the state will be given the same jurisdiction as state and local police agencies.
Gene Burton, director of public safety at Ball State University, said he hoped the bill passed because university police officers go through the same training as any other police officers.
"What it succeeds in doing is putting campus law enforcement on the same level as state and local agencies," he said.
Burton said the bill wouldn't affect day-to-day operations for individual departments but would allow more cooperation between different universities' police should the need arise. Ball State police have a fine working relationship with other local law enforcement, he said, and the bill wouldn't affect that.
IUPUI Cpt. Bob True said campus departments also would be able to work together better with each other and local agencies.
"We're just hoping to fill in the blank to provide mutual aid during emergencies," True said.
Both Burton and True used an incident at Butler University as an example of how the bill could help.
A few years ago a Butler police officer was shot and killed. Indianapolis and IUPUI police took over for the Butler law enforcement for two and a half days after the incident so regular officers could attend the funeral and recover.
As the law is written now, campus police departments have jurisdiction on campus and adjacent roads. They must have agreements with local law enforcement to have jurisdiction in their counties. If the bill passes they would be treated as any local or state police agency and given equal jurisdiction rights.
Burton and True said IUPUI officers helping was only allowed because IUPUI and Butler are in the same county. If Ball State officers wanted to offer aid, they couldn't.
True said criminal investigations often take campus police out of county and jurisdiction, forcing officers to ask for help from local police in order to make arrests. He said it has caused problems in the past and would be resolved before they happen if the bill passes.
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