HARVARD ’S FINEST? THE CASE FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY POLICE DEPARTMENT November 2020 THE CASE FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY POLICE DEPARTMENT A report by the Harvard Alliance Against Campus Cops (HAACC) This report is authored by members of the Harvard Alliance Against Campus Cops, including: Ifea, Anand Chukkab, Iman Mohamed, Lynn Hurb, Xitlalli Alvarez Almendariz, Joan Steffen, Kiryung Kimb, Eric Cohnc, Amanda Chan, Joanna Anyanwud, Nnamdi Jogwe, Alexis Smithb, Mimi Yen Lib, Aisha Oshilaja, George Hutchinsb, Marina Multhaupd. We received invaluable assistance transcribing HUPD police logs for analysis from many additional individ- uals, including: Courtney Doughertyd, Ash Inglisa, Massiel Torres Ulloae, Julia Beatinib, and Wesley Choub. Thank you also to Sam Matthew (GSD ’18) for designing the report. This report was made possible in part through funding from the National Lawyers’ Guild. Harvard Collegea, Harvard Medical Schoolb, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Healthc, Harvard Law Schoold, Department of Romance Languages and Literaturee CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 6 LIST OF DEMANDS 8 WHAT WE BELIEVE & WHAT WE DEMAND 13 ALTERNATIVES TO CALLING THE POLICE 47 HISTORY OF HUPD 50 WHAT DOES HUPD DO? 88 FOLLOW THE MONEY 104 ABOLITION AS HEALTHCARE 110 HARVARD’S BLACK BOX 118 THE MORAL CASE FOR ABOLITION 122 APPENDIX: HUPD STORIES 136 found, the University profits from criminal- This is the first time that such EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ization and mass incarceration through its extensive data analysis and historical minimum $3 million of investments in the research has been conducted on HUPD. prison-industrial complex.3 Our research suggests that HUPD is a Harvard Alliance Against Campus death, HUPD officers were photographed department that operates just like all Cops (HAACC) is a coalition of students patrolling a Black Lives Matter vigil in We begin by presenting our demands, police — it doesn’t prevent harm, but and alumni demanding the abolition of Franklin Park. including the abolition of HUPD and rather, it serves to control who belongs the Harvard University Police Depart- the reinvestment of its resources into and who doesn’t within Harvard’s gates. ment (HUPD). Formed in the wake of the communities that Harvard has harmed, as This is why we’re calling on Harvard to brutal murders of George Floyd, Breonna KEY FINDINGS well as proposals to immediately reduce abolish HUPD: so that we can open new Taylor, Tony McDade, Rayshard Brooks, 1. According to the more than 11,000 the University’s reliance on HUPD. Then, possibilities for imagining safety and care and countless others by law enforcement HUPD records that we analyzed, most we provide a comprehensive history of for one another. officers, we believe that HUPD, like every of what HUPD does is take reports the university police department from the vast majority of other police force, has no place in our of thefts, and its origins in the late 19th century to the To be clear, our demand is not to these theft reports remain “open,” or community. We recognize that HUPD does discrimination and profiling that has replace HUPD with the Cambridge Police unsolved. not make our campus nor the Cambridge occurred under Chief Riley’s tenure. We Department. HAACC does not advocate community safer. Rather, we argue, Harvard 2. Often, HUPD is dispatched to also analyze more than 11,000 police logs for policing in any form. We stand in firm University has used HUPD and other local investigate reports of “suspicious spanning a period of five years (from 2015 solidarity with communities decrying the law enforcement agencies to violently target activity,” and our analysis reveals to 2020) and share stories of people who presence of police forces that use threats of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BI- that many of these incidents suggest have been impacted by HUPD. arrest, incarceration, and violence under the POC), queer, poor and unhoused people in that “suspicious” means someone guise of promoting public safety in their an effort to protect property and whiteness. experiencing mental illness, emotional Next, we provide the financial, medical, cities and towns. We demand that Harvard Our research disproves the commonly-held distress, poverty, or houselessness. legal, and moral rationales for abolition that replace its current system of using police belief that HUPD is a “soft” or relatively 3. Of the people that HUPD arrested ultimately inform our demands. In “Follow to protect property and criminalize harmless police force through both historical after being called to investigate the Money,” we place HUPD’s budget in poverty with new systems that are absent and empirical data.1 someone “suspicious,” a significant context with other aspects of the university of police, where social and community proportion (29.3%) of arrested programs prevent harm and protect individuals were experiencing housing that are severely underfunded, and envision Harvard regularly uses HUPD and other people. HAACC seeks a campus whose insecurity, and a plurality (35%) were what could come in its place. In “Abolition local law enforcement agencies to police, safety is cultivated by an open community, arrested for “trespassing” (being on as Healthcare,” we argue that abolition is a surveil, and brutalize students and residents where care for each other is paramount. Harvard property). necessary approach to stop the public health of the greater Boston/Cambridge areas. In 4. Although the details of HUPD’s emergency of violent policing. In “Harvard’s spring 2018, Harvard University Health budget are shrouded in secrecy, we Black Box,” we analyze Harvard’s fight We understand that abolition is a Services, rather than providing aid to a Black estimate that Harvard spends over to ensure that HUPD records are not groundbreaking way of understanding harm student in crisis, called Cambridge Police, subject to public records laws. This lack of and responses to harm. Police and prison 2 $20 million a year on the force. who then physically beat the student. transparency is concerning, and it prompts abolition push us to re-imagine safety, Moreover, through their mutual-aid agree- the question of what it is that HUPD might security, and accountability in ways that are ments with the Boston and Cambridge po- be hiding. Finally, we make the moral originative. On our website (copfreeharvard. lice departments, HUPD has been deployed This report contextualizes these recent case for abolition, arguing that Harvard org), we have compiled often-heard argu- to protests across Boston and Cambridge. In events within a much longer history of pro- has the opportunity to be accountable to ments about abolition and responses to each September 2019, HUPD officers were sent filing, harassment, and violence perpetrated the community it has harmed through of these issues. Above all, we ask that readers to the #NoTechForICE protest at Amazon by the hands of HUPD and in the name of abolishing HUPD and building community- imagine abolition as not just a destructive in Kendall Square. And on June 2nd of the University. It demonstrates Harvard’s led, life-sustaining institutions in its place. program but also as a constructive, commu- this year, mere days after President Bacow complicity in enacting police violence, and nity-centered framework. sent an email lamenting George Floyd’s also touches on the ways in which, as the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign has 6 7 LIST OF DEMANDS 5. REDISTRIBUTE HUPD’S BUDGET Firstly we reiterate our demand to abolish the Harvard University Police Department in its entirety and replace it with investments in the broader Harvard community that redress Redistribute HUPD’s budget to community members, instead of mechanisms of control, harm and care for people. Below is a list of abolitionist steps toward the abolition of HUPD: surveillance, and violence. The HUPD funds should be redirected to causes and communities that include, but are not limited to: • Personal protective equipment for all Harvard workers 1. DEFUND HUPD • Improved benefits for contingent faculty • Improved benefits for graduate student workers Cut the department’s budget by 80 to 100%. • Increased student health and mental health services, with an emphasis on counselors of color • Financial and emergency aid • Money to fund Ethnic Studies Department lines 2. END HUPD’S POLICE CONTRACTS • Perpetual donations to non-carceral organizations that support Cambridge’s housing insecure community such as: Spare Change, MAAP, and housing shelters End HUPD’s contracts with Cambridge Police, Boston Police, Massachusetts State Police and end collaboration with ICE, the FBI, FUSION, BRIC, or CIA. HUPD has “mutual aid agreements” with the Boston Police Department, Cambridge Police Department, and possi- 6. OPEN THE GATES bly the Massachusetts State Police. In these agreements, HUPD is able to show up in situa- tions where CPD or BPD have jurisdiction in order to provide further officers or “assistance,” Harvard’s Yard and common spaces should be open to all. Common spaces include libraries, regardless of whether more officers are necessary. Additionally, while no formal “mutual aid” lounges, study halls, and outdoor spaces. agreements exist between HUPD and law enforcement and intelligence agencies such as ICE, the FBI, the CIA, the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), and Homeland Security Fusion Centers, they have historically collaborated with them. In these contexts, the term “mutual aid” is a falsehood which masks the reality that HUPD often polices racialized, poor, 7. STOP LANDGRABBING and housing insecure people in the greater Boston area while largely shielding affluent and white students from city police. Harvard continues to buy land and extend its reach well past the traditional borders of the Harvard Yard, even using misleading tactics to do so. Cambridge and Boston rent is already unaffordable for so many people, and yet Harvard pays no attention as it gentri- 3. DISARM HUPD fies wider and wider without any regard for the people who are pushed out.