Northwestern University Police Fail To Provide Required Reports

EVANSTON, IL — After more than two weeks of nightly protests calling for Northwestern University to disband its private police force, University President Morton Schapiro promised to create a new advisory board and hold regular meetings with the community on "a range of issues surrounding public safety, well-being and equity."

In a Tuesday message, Schapiro said administrators will share a public report once consultants hired to review the work of the Northwestern University Police Department complete their work this fall. Last week, Schapiro said university officials are committed to improving the school's security force but have "absolutely no intention" to abolish it.

"We also are finding ways to provide more information regularly about the inner workings of NUPD, including an overview of its budget by November 16," Schapiro said.

But current and former Northwestern students described the "new community safety oversight advisory board" that Schapiro announced as merely a rebranding of an existing — and ineffectual — committee.

And while Schapiro said the university was interested in providing more information about its operations, records show the university has failed to abide by the oversight requirements of its existing binding agreement with the Evanston Police Department — and a university spokesperson refused to confirm basic public information about Northwestern's agreements with other public bodies.

Although the university's privately financed police force is immune from transparency requirements under state law, Schapiro said the rebranded advisory board would nonetheless be tasked with "fostering transparency and trust." The board would have the power to make recommendations to him and other leaders, he suggested.

Since early June, a coalition of students and organizations at Northwestern has called for the institution to "divest from law enforcement," demanding the university cut ties with municipal police departments in Evanston and Chicago and shutter its own law enforcement agency.

Starting Oct. 12, the NU Community Not Cops group has been demonstrating on campus nightly, with up to several hundred students and their supporters marching around Evanston. The protests have involved some street closures and vandalism on and off campus. But there have been no reports of any injuries or arrests — although Northwestern police, unlike public police departments, are not required to disclose information about people they arrest or detain.

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According to the binding mutual cooperation agreement between Evanston police and the university — which grants the university's officers full powers of arrest and detention off-campus, even of people with no connection to the university — NUPD "will provide" both a monthly and annual report to the Evanston Police Department to detail its off-campus activities, statistics and citizen complaints.

The agreement also says NUPD "will notify" Evanston police about various serious offenses.

But in responses to public records requests, city officials confirmed Evanston has received no such reports in recent years.

Jon Yates, assistant vice president of communications, chose not to answer questions about why Northwestern does not appear to be living up to its end of the agreement with Evanston police and what reports, if any, the university provides to the city.

Yates also declined to name the law enforcement mutual aid organizations of which the university is a part. But public records obtained by Evanston Patch show that Northwestern is one of 15 private members — among three railroads and a dozen colleges — of the Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System, or ILEAS, a statewide mutual aid network.

According to ILEAS records, the university has never called for assistance from the network, but Northwestern has provided patrol officers or supervisors four times so far this year — first to Evanston police in March for a protest, once in April to the Skokie Police Department for a call of gunfire, and then again to Skokie police on May 30 and June 1 due to fears of potential looting.

Northwestern Associate Vice President Bruce Lewis, who serves as chief of the school's private force, told the Daily Northwestern the university's existing police advisory board meets twice a year and includes as members representatives of multiple campus organizations — but representatives of those groups told the school paper either they had no idea they were on the advisory board or the meetings do not occur regularly.

Schapiro said university leaders would share further information about the rebranded advisory board as their plans are finalized. The university president said school officials were committed to holding regular meetings with student groups, including those calling for the abolition of campus cops.

"In addition to this, other senior leaders and I are scheduling a series of conversations with the larger Northwestern community on a range of issues surrounding public safety, well-being and equity. These will be opportunities to listen to one another," he said. "It is crucial that our efforts to rectify instances of anti-Blackness and other discrimination be informed by the perspectives of our students and the world-class expertise of our faculty and staff."

UPDATE: Northwestern Students, Police Clash In Downtown Evanston