Jack Hardcastle

If I understand the circumstances regarding last week’s incident in which a Rice student was pulled from a classroom (“Student criticizes Rice Police after being removed from class,” Feb. 17), then I feel obligated to support the Rice police.

I’m not doing this because fear for my safety is coercing me to relinquish my Constitutional rights.

I think our right to be protected against unreasonable search and seizure is sacrosanct, and I disagree with anyone who feels we should give up our rights in these troubled times to ensure our safety.

I’m doing this because I feel that the manner in which the officer responded was proper and I can imagine only minor changes.

I echo the praise given by some senior administrators that Rice hasn’t “racialized” the issue. I would hope that if the description included a Caucasian suspect instead of an African-American one that I too would be under scrutiny and would receive similar treatment (although I think a 6 foot 6 inch tall boisterous overweight bearded male would make a terrible thief). I recognize that Rice has a terrible history of discrimination, and I do not wish to see that resurface. If Mr. Callahan was treated differently because of his skin color I too would be outraged, but it does not appear to be the case here.

I’d like to discuss the other half of this incident; a Rice University Police officer entered a classroom after seeing an individual who, for all intents and purposes fit the description of a thief, and removed him temporarily for questioning. Immediately after being identified as someone other than the robber, the student was released.

Should the officer have entered the classroom and removed the student? Should the student have been put in front of a make-shift lineup before an eyewitness? Should the student have been a suspect in the first place? Yes, and no.

How was the officer to have known that the individual in question was a student? A smart thief would pretend to be a student in order to blend in and avoid attention. He or she might have ducked into a lecture immediately after the theft in order to evade capture. I don’t know that I would have pointed out an unusual individual sitting in the classroom with a backpack on. I don’t know that I could have if I wanted to.

So, the officer could not have known whether or not he was a student. She could have radioed dispatch to request that an administrator remove the student from class for questioning, but that presupposes that he was a student. If he had indeed been a thief, it is possible he could have been armed or dangerous, and RUPD is here for just such occurrences. I would not want to put an untrained individual in close proximity to someone like that if we could avoid it.

She could have, after removing the suspect from class, taken him back to the Police Department across campus for questioning, handcuffed and in the back of an RUPD squad car. They could have searched him and found that he was not carrying the stolen goods. Instead, the officer chose the quickest, most expedient route. The eyewitness was brought forward and was able to tell the officers that the student was not the suspect in question. The student was released in under five minutes to return to class.

So in the end, the worst outcome from this whole situation was that our classmate was humiliated in front of his friends and his professor. For that, I am deeply sorry. I would like to apologize to Mr. Callahan for his misfortune. It is sad that theft has increased wildly on campus, and I’m sorry that the suspect’s description was so broad that it included him. Additionally, it’s possible that the officer could have been more polite in singling out Mr. Callahan instead of gesturing towards the students. I am not sorry, however, that Rice’s finest did the job to the best of their abilities. They acted in the best interests of the community, and with due deference to the suspect involved.