Clarification: A caption for a photograph accompanying this article was unclear. The photo was of a university police officer at the November 2009 UC Board of Regents meeting at UCLA. The photograph should have given the impression that there will not necessarily be a need for officers to use force at this week’s Regent’s meeting.
As the UC Board of Regents begins its meetings today at UC San Diego, 20 officers from the UCLA police department are taking a road trip down to San Diego to supplement the police force there.
All of the UC campuses send several officers to aid the city where the meetings take place, said UCPD Capt. Manny Garza.
“We do mutual aid typically for large events, everything from the UC Santa Barbara Halloween to regents meetings to basketball games,” Garza said.
Officers from all 10 campuses work together because they have received similar training and use the same guidelines to react in situations, Garza said.
Although the officers do not undergo specific training for these events, Garza said that they will review protocol for situations that are likely to occur.
For example, he said for the regents meeting, the officers reviewed crowd control tactics.
Although the traveling officers constitute approximately a third of the UCLA force , they are pulled from a variety of departments to minimize the effect on the school, Garza said.
The minimum number of officers that are out in the field will not change, he said, although in the supporting units, some activities will have to be slowed down.
This is the first regents meeting at an undergraduate campus in more than a year. At the last meeting at UC San Francisco, 11 students were arrested and an officer had to pull a gun in self-defense.
Having a large police presence does not guarantee a more peaceful setting, said Jasmine Hill, Undergraduate Students Association Council president, who has attended the last few regents meetings.
Hill said she believes students are more nervous when there is a large police presence, and this heightens tensions between protesters and the police force.
Cristopher Santos, USAC external vice president, said he thinks these meetings will be calmer because they will not address student fees like the last two meetings did.
Santos said he expects about 100 students to be at the meeting, with approximately 15 to 20 UCLA students going.
“At the end of the day (the police) are just there to do their job, and oftentimes they are in agreement with what we are advocating for,” Santos said. “We need to have an understanding that they are just there to do their work and we are there to do ours.”