[Important Information for Employees] A message from UP Chief Patrick Rascoe

[Patrick Rascoe]

Dear Campus Community,



I am writing to address the incident involving a traffic stop that took
place last Thursday night when a UP officer stopped a vehicle with its
headlights off on a Plattsburgh city street. The driver, a SUNY Plattsburgh
student who identifies as a Black female, was arrested based on several
additional violations, and her car was impounded according to protocol.
During this process, the student resisted arrest and the officers resorted
to the use of physical force (gripped her arms while walking her to the UP
vehicle).



While the above summary presents the straightforward facts of this
incident, they also presented an opportunity, that night, for the kind of
trauma-informed, student-centered response that our officers always strive
to provide.



However, last Thursday night we fell short of this goal.



I understand that the driver and her passenger felt fearful, threatened,
and traumatized by the events of that evening. I also understand that the
campus community is feeling hurt, angry, and additionally traumatized by
the knowledge that some of our police response was neither trauma-informed
nor student-centered, as the focus remained solely on proper process and
procedure, without accounting for the students’ very real fear and
confusion around the events that were rapidly unfolding.



As the chief of police, I have always led the SUNY Plattsburgh University
Police department with the belief that we best serve our campus community
by not only addressing the issue at hand, but by helping to resolve the
overall situation. We aim to do this daily while recognizing the diverse
population we serve with the understanding no two people share the same
experiences or life situations. This is what makes campus policing unique.
Our officers are trained and supervised to approach their work with
compassion, active listening, and a focus on developing solutions to
problems rather than delivering hardline ultimatums. And we strive to
operate in a trauma-informed, student-centered manner.



There is a path forward from this. I am in ongoing conversations with the
President about next steps. Today we discussed the possibility of
forming a student/police
campus relations Advisory Group, among other ideas, and will share more as
we move forward.

It is my expectation that in the coming days and weeks, as we work to
address and further respond to this issue, UP will become better and
stronger, and together we will move forward and begin to heal as a
community.

-- 
PATRICK W. RASCOE
Chief of Police
University Police Department
Health Center Building
45 Rugar Street
Plattsburgh, NY 12901
(o) 518-564-2022 <+1-518-564-2022>
(f) 518-564-4025 <+1-518-564-4025>
plattsburgh.edu <https://www.plattsburgh.edu/>

[image: State University of New York at Plattsburgh Logo]

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