By Judah Breitbach
Impaired driver resists police department
The talk of the campus the past few days is the accident resulting from an impaired driver having his way on the road, or rather, the faculty parking section of the campus parking lot.
The outburst of the impaired driver and the resulting physical altercation be- tween the vehicle’s driver and the PAPD.
A white Mercedes SUV crashed into the rear, right-hand side of a black Mercedes SUV with enough force to push it into adjacent cars, including a trifecta of faculty cars, creating a domino effect, according to eyewitness reports.
The driver of the white SUV, Robert E. Johnson Jr., 31, was arrested for obstructing a law enforcement officer, as well as a suspected DUI.
“I approached the vehicle’s driver and began having a conversation with him and he became super irate,” said Head of Campus Security, Marty Martinez.
“He became combative and said he wanted to kill me and another campus security officer, Alec Risk.”
“At first I thought he wanted to fight, but as soon as I got on the phone with police dispatch Security Officer Risk started talking with him. Risk was trying to calm him down, but he was still pretty upset,” remembers Martinez.
“But he started to cool down immediately after the police arrived. Until they asked him to sit down.”
That was when things began to get heated. Yelling from Johnson led to a scuffle with three PAPD officers.
Officer Steffen Estep’s report indicates that he and officers Fairbanks and Ryan “escorted Johnson to the ground.”
The few hot moments were captured on video by student Marcus Delano, Martinez, and Colleen and Michael Goos.
The altercation between Johnson and law enforcement is only the latest in a series of two car thefts and a single robbery of the Allied Health building’s construction site.
This leads to a variety of questions concerning funding of the campus security unit, as well as campus-wide outdoor surveillance.
Especially given the current budget.
Surveillance as a preventative measure
Maintaining a safe and secure campus was something both Marty Martinez and Vice President for Finance and Administration Deborah Frazier reiterated as a priority.
Martinez handles the procedural aspect of that promise of safety, whereas Frazier handles the policy side. The later might be the ongoing question.
Do we need preventive measures? Both Martinez and Frazier seem to think we already have them in place already.
They both agree that something like public video surveillance would involve the consent of the studentry.
“We’ve had cameras in the art gallery in the past, but there needs to be really solid reasoning here too.
“Surveillance is, by its nature, intrusive. I’m not sure it works as a deterrent at all,” said Frazier asked about funding for video surveillance.
“If someone isn’t sitting there watch- ing the live footage at all times, there is really no deterrent. Then you’re really talking about a lot of money, because we’re talking people and their salaries.”