Marquette University’s Department of Public Safety ostensibly exists in order to ensure the security of students at Marquette. With ninety four officers and staff members, DPS works to uphold the law in the campus area. They use both cameras and street patrols in order to monitor anyone who walks into that area. The blue and yellow cars and armed officers create the perception of authority. This then begs the question, what power exactly does DPS actually have?

According to Wisconsin State Statute 967.02 (5) a law enforcement officer is anyone who “…by virtue of the person’s office or public employment is vested by the law with the duty to maintain public order or to make arrests for crimes while acting within the scope of the person’s authority.” Given that DPS officers and staffers are employed by Marquette University they fail to meet the most basic requirement of this position. As such, they cannot be termed law enforcement officers. As a result DPS officers do not have the authority to arrest people. They can, however, act upon citizen’s arrests, as can any other person. Through a series of Wisconsin Supreme Court Rulings, including Radloff v. National Food Stores and Waukesha v. Gorz, a series of crimes have been determined which allow for citizen’s arrest. According to both the “Spring 2005 City of Madison Legal Update” and a 2008 Memorandum from Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen to the Brown County Sheriff’s Department, felonies and a handful of misdemeanors are cause for citizen’s arrest. The misdemeanors which are severe enough for one to be subject to citizen’s arrest are battery, fourth degree or greater sexual assault, endangering safety by use of a dangerous weapon, carrying a concealed weapon, and disorderly conduct. From this analysis one can see that DPS has absolutely no authority whatsoever to enforce the law, outside of that of citizen’s arrest power.

One need only to read the weekly DPS reports in order to discover reports of DPS officers exceeding their authority in order to “protect” Marquette students and “uphold” the law. While their intentions might be good, they still are beyond their legal authority. An example of this is the any one of dozens of instances of DPS officers detaining students on public property for underage possession of alcohol. While I am not advocating underage alcohol possession nor consumption, the fact still remains that DPS officers cannot detain these students. Stopping students in alleyways, searching them, and seizing the alcohol is well beyond the legal authority of DPS.

Another example of DPS exceeding its authority occurred on the night of Friday, September 11, 2009. A group of area residents were standing on a sidewalk between 17th and 18th streets along Kilbourn. The residents were approached by a DPS officer in a patrol car, who angrily ordered them to leave the sidewalk area near the alleyway. The residents then informed the officer that he did not have the legal authority to demand that they leave public areas. The officer then left his vehicle approached the residents, and again ordered them to leave the area. He then threatened to run over the residents with his patrol car. He then contacted his superiors, and informed them that he had encountered “uncooperative individuals.” The fact that he assumed that he had authority over people standing on a sidewalk shows the mentality of DPS. After contacting his superiors, two commanding officers and five other officers arrived in four separate patrol cars. The officers proceeded to surround the residents and interrogate them. The commanding officers eventually admitted that no in fact they did not have the authority to order residents to leave sidewalks, and that in addition they did not have the authority to threaten to run over residents.

While one can argue that this case is an extreme and does not represent the actions of the majority of DPS officers, the fact still remains that DPS officers do patrol the area and do in fact step beyond their legal authority, given that they have no legal jurisdiction and cannot act to enforce the law to any degree more than any MU student can. The extralegal actions of DPS are further shown through their use of cameras to monitor the campus area, which they claim are to enable them to respond to crimes. The problem with this is, however, that cameras, in all likelihood, do not meet the definition of presence in regards to the law. As such, DPS officers are not present during the commission of the crime, and cannot act to respond to it, given that one has to be present when a crime is committed in order for a citizen’s arrest to occur. I cannot, for example, watch a crime on live television and then go and arrest the person, much the same DPS cannot watch a crime being committed on its security cameras and then go and detain the person, for doing so would, in all likelihood, be the equivalent of illegal imprisonment, which is a Class H felony under Wisconsin State Statute 940.30.

Marquette’s DPS officers are just ordinary citizens with no special authority or privileges. They cannot do anything that you and I cannot do. I therefore urge all people who read this to openly resist the assault upon the rule of law which is represented by DPS officers acting as law enforcement officers. If they can do whatever they please in the name of the law, then we might as well hire Xe (formerly known as Blackwater) and DynCorp to protect us, because at least they have helicopters and assault rifles and could really protect us. We must remember the quote from Benjamin Franklin, “those who would sacrifice liberty for temporal security deserve neither liberty nor temporal security”, and fight against this assault on freedom and the law.

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