Agree to disagree?Discordance in agency responses regarding campus safety

Abstract

Within the tragedy of the Virginia Tech shooting was praise for the campus and community police departments based on their prior coordination and collaboration. After-action reports frequently credited the actions of the agencies with preventing an even greater loss of life thereby focusing attention on the presumed importance of close inter-agency relationships. This paper examines the level of agreement between officials representing campus public safety agencies and their neighboring local law enforcement departments on a range of issues related to campus critical incident preparedness. Data were collected from a national sample of both campus safety departments and a matched sample of adjacent law enforcement organizations. Results are based on agreement analysis of responses from 116 agency pairs. Overall findings suggest only modest agreement, at best, on issues related to campus safety including history of critical incidents, perceived risk of future incidents, mutual assistance, and preparedness activities, suggesting that agency officials may not share common understandings of important issues. In addition to reporting empirical findings, the research demonstrates the value of concordance measures as a means of examining agreement between law enforcement leaders and others.