Harvard closes police station due to students’ feeling ‘watched and policed’: ‘not a pleasant feeling’

Harvard College closed a police station situated in a residential corridor as a result of college students’ felt that the presence itself was a “violent, visible intimidation tactic.”

The Harvard College Police Division’s substation on the Mather Home was closed in February as a result of college students felt it created an intimidating atmosphere, in keeping with the Harvard Crimson.

A resident within the Mather Home, Religion Woods, informed the information outlet that the police are usually not current to “hold me actively secure.”

“I’m nicely conscious that the police are usually not there to maintain me actively secure,” Woods stated. “Having a police automobile sitting outdoors of Mather each night time — which it does — doesn’t convey me any sense of security.”

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Woods added that the police division’s substation “implies that we’re being watched and policed, which isn’t a pleasing feeling.”

In a press release offered to the newspaper, a Harvard College Police Division spokesperson stated that the closure was a results of issues raised by college students in addition to how a lot police used the substation.

“The choice to shut the Mather Home substation was made final week in response to issues raised by Mather Home employees and college students in addition to the quantity of use of the substation by officers and neighborhood members,” the spokesperson stated.

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Gate at Harvard Yard in Harvard College. Harvard College is situated in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
(Photograph by Scott Eisen/Getty Photos)

Campus Reform reported that the closest police substation is now 0.6 miles away from the residential corridor.

One other resident of the Mather Home, Eleanor Taylor, stated that the police division’s substation was used as a “visible intimidation tactic” in opposition to college students.

“The true impact that the presence of the HUPD substation has on the Mather neighborhood is solely a violent, visible intimidation tactic that college students are pressured to see each time they enter the home,” Taylor stated.

Taylor additionally reached out to the home’s school deans concerning issues that armed Harvard College Police Division officers ate meals alongside college students on varied events within the eating corridor over the course of the 2019-2020 educational yr, including that their presence made residents really feel uncomfortable.

Harvard College closed a police station situated in a residential corridor as a result of college students’ felt that their presence itself was a “violent, visible intimidation tactic.”
(AP)

Nevertheless, Mather Home resident Kai DeJesus stated that whereas the substation’s closure is a “actually good first step,” the college’s police division in the end must be abolished.

“For actual justice to exist on this campus, HUPD should be abolished,” DeJesus stated.

Harvard College didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from Fox Information.