Campus Security Are Liars

I had a run in with the campus security today. It left me feeling unsafe on campus. I feel I can no longer trust campus security at the University of Calgary. It seems to me as if they are high on their imagined authority and like to push their weight around.

I was on my way to the volleyball game when I saw four fat U of C campus security running towards one of the buildings on campus. As luck would have it, I had my staff camera with me and so I followed them. The got onto an elevator, and I watched what floor it stopped on and took the next elevator up.

The four officers, were in a computer lab one floor up, and through the window I could see them being held at bay, by a younger looking man who appeared to be injured. He was standing in such a way that he appeared to have some sort of weapon. (He may or may not have had anything, but it appeared that the officers didn't want to get too close to the guy.)

I was making adjustments to my camera to get it ready for action, when one of the lady officers came out and told me that I wasn't allowed to photograph the situation. I said, that I would be photographing what ever I wanted. It went back and forth like that for a little while, and so one of them called one of their sub-bosses and he came up and said the same thing. I told him the same thing, and it went back and forth for awhile, and then he phoned his boss.

After the phone call, he told me that if I continued to photograph the situation, (taking place in another room) that he had the authority and permission to arrest me and that I would be spending time in the holding cell. Which was a big lie. Campus security are not police. They couldn't arrest their own ass, let alone anyone else. While telling lies is a good way to threaten and bully people, it decreases the trust that people have for their office.

Campus Security are liars and they seem to enjoy bullying people. I no longer have any respect for them and it makes me feel unsafe to know that they are willing to lie to people to get their own way. Pushing your weight around and pretending to hold authority seems to give Campus Security at the University of Calgary a sense of importance.

Really a good private security force should concentrate on helping people rather than acting like jack-booted thugs. I would have really liked to write about how these people are heroes, how they help the student population, but from what I've seen, they lie, threaten people, and don't actually do anything.

-Gary Milner, at least they didn't hit me with their batons.