Brooklyn College President Michelle Anderson, who is a former Yale Law school professor, banned peace officers from carrying guns within the premises of the Flatbush-Midwood campus on October 12, 2021. This was in response to a complaint from an unnamed official, who was ‘triggered’ by the sight of a female security officer carrying a Glock-19 pistol.
Mere months later, on February 3, there was an active shooter incident very close to the campus. This incident left 4 people wounded. As the situation was unfolding, the campus asked for help from 5 other institutions and received 10 peace officers in response. In the meanwhile, on-campus security scrambled to get the guns that were locked away in lockers as per the gun ban by Anderson.
The shooter did not enter campus premises, and no one from the campus is hurt. However, this incident shows that danger is never too far away. It begs the question of why the college President thought it a good idea to ban police and security from carrying guns on campus.
An unnamed source said to Daily Mail that it was Anderson herself who authorized the female peace officer in question to carry a Glock. “It is all somewhat ironic because this woman peace officer had been personally authorized to carry her Glock on school grounds by Anderson herself several years ago,” said this person.
Sometime after implementing the no-gun policy, Anderson participated in a Zoom meeting with campus administrators, students, and faculty members, where she proposed eliminating police presence from campus completely and no longer have armed security, in a move to ‘revamp campus security.’ A CUNY campus police supervisor, who did not wish to be named, said, “She is all about wokeness.” Sources say that Anderson may have been urged to follow these anti-cop policies due to the BLM protests that erupted in 2020.
Maybe it’s not a great idea to ban police and guns in a city that is seeing a troubling crime wave – crime in New York City has risen to 41.65%. Moreover, gun crimes have increased by 30% in one year. In Brooklyn South, where the Brooklyn College is situated, gun crimes have increased by an alarming 111.1% within the past year.
Incident after incident have shown that college campuses can be quite dangerous. For instance, earlier this month two unarmed cops named John Painter and J.J. Jefferson were shot and killed by a suspect at Bridgewater College in Virginia – maybe if they had their guns they could’ve defended themselves. Also, in December of 2019, Tessa Majors, a student of Barnard College, was stabbed to death during an armed robbery. And in December 2021, Columbia University graduate student and Ph.D. candidate Davide Giri was knifed down near the Upper Manhattan campus.
As of now, only 9 out of 25 CUNY institutions allow peace officers to carry guns within campus premises. It remains to be seen when these woke college administrators would wise up to the danger of banning guns from the good guys while there are many bad guys with guns about.
