What does it say on the side of that cruiser?
The overlapping duties of the Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) and local city police have blurred the jurisdictional lines of the different police departments for many students living off campus.
Junior Dave Naden, who is currently studying abroad in Spain, had an encounter with the Somerville Police Department (SPD) and TUPD this summer that illustrates this confusion.
Naden threw a party, and the SPD arrived, informing Naden that a noise complaint had been made.
"I explained to them that we just had some friends over and asked if there was anything I could do," Naden said. "The officer told me that if we turned the music down and closed the windows, we should be fine."
Naden complied with the requests and informed his guests to keep the noise down but TUPD arrived five minutes later and said that they had been contacted by Somerville police.
They asked Naden if he was a Tufts student, and when Naden confirmed that he was, he was written up for a noise violation.
"I was confused, because I was just told by a Somerville police officer that the gathering could continue," Naden said.
"I explained to the TUPD officers what the Somerville officer had said, but they weren't having it. Either way, I had four police cars outside my house within those five minutes," he said.
Like paying bills and taking out the trash, encounters with the Somerville police can be an unexpected consequence of living off campus. Naden said that many students have to come to terms with this the hard way.
"I think that plenty of students know who has jurisdiction over their off-campus house, but only because they've had off-campus encounters with TUPD," Naden said.
"I think there are also plenty of students, like myself, who don't know the situation, primarily because it's their first time living off-campus."
According to the Tufts student manual, The Pachyderm, "university jurisdiction is not defined by geography, but by a student's membership in the Tufts University community," and "Tufts, Medford and Somerville police work in unison and may respond separately or jointly to off-campus complaints."
Captain Mark Keith of TUPD said the jurisdictional issue has two main components: response and reports. While campus and city police collaborate on responding to complaints, the decision to file or not to file a report is at each department's discretion.
"Primarily, anything off campus is in the jurisdiction of that particular city, whether it be Medford or Somerville," Keith said. "If we're available, we respond with them, but deciding to file a report is up to each unit."
The processing of complaints, notification of appropriate patrol cars and arrival at the scene are joint processes of TUPD and local police departments. TUPD has a direct line with both Medford and Somerville police stations, and the three departments inform each other of noise complaints that are called in by local residents.
"When we get a call for disturbance off campus, our procedure is to notify that city that we have a call and give the location and information," Keith said. "When they receive a call or complaint from a resident and they believe it may be associated with Tufts students, most of the time, they'll pick up the phone and let us know that they're responding to a call they believe involves Tufts students.
"It's normally a joint response, but it depends on who's there initially," Keith said. "Generally, that officer will attempt to make contact with resident of house, explain the nature of complaint, and decide how best to handle the situation. There are times that [other departments] may say they don't have unit available and ask us to handle a particular situation."
While the local units are often more flexible in their reporting, TUPD writes a report in almost all cases, which is then forwarded to the office of Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman.
"In general, we do a report on nearly every call of disturbance off campus, whether Somerville or Medford police are there or not," Keith said, noting that Somerville and Medford police often use their computer-assisted dispatch (CAD) systems to communicate with headquarters about noise violation incidents.
"They most often do not file an actual report, but they have CAD entries where they indicate the response they took," he said.
TUPD reports are not necessarily a disciplinary death sentence for Tufts students involved and may result in no negative action.
According to Keith, reports are not always written to indicate that TUPD found a disturbance and can also state explicitly that they did not find any such thing.
"Those reports reflect what we found upon arrival," Keith said. "Sometimes, we hear loud music or loud voices creating a disturbance, but many times, we hear no noise coming from the house, or we make contact with people on the front porch, ask them to bring it inside and they comply. So it depends on the particular situation."
But this seems to be lost on many Tufts students, who automatically associate police presence with disciplinary action.
"I think that it's something that needs clarification, because when I was told one thing by Somerville police, then another by TUPD, I wasn't only confused but upset with the system," Naden said. "If I'd understood better what was going on, I might have been more complacent."
