University Police Ride-Along Well Worth the Trip
February 4, 2019
Lt. Zachary Lee Want a crash course in law enforcement on the FSC campus? How about learning how to avoid a traffic ticket? Maybe you want to know if FSC police are the “real deal” or just glorified security guards?
You’ll get the answers to these questions and more when you take a police ride-along, offered free by University Police.
In a ride-along you get to sit in a UP SUV, which is equipped with everything from computers and printers (which Lieutenant Zachary Lee refers to as a “mobile office”) to firearms and emergency medical kits. Oh, and radar guns and license-plate scanners. In other words, all this and more – which is what you’ll find in a typical New York State police vehicle.
That’s because our University Police ARE state police officers.
Do the ride-along. It’s easy. Just stop by the University Police building on the north side of campus, and ask for an application. Fill it out, and then UP does a background check. Pass without a problem and off you go. Rides last four hours, but you can shorten the time if necessary.
If you’re lucky you’ll get Lieutenant Lee, who started his career at Stony Brook University and has been in law enforcement for nearly a decade. What you’ll get is the exact same experience that UP have every day: patrolling the campus; chatting up students/faculty/staff (known as “Park, Walk and Talk”); parking in open areas to deter crime and bad behavior; looking for DWI offenders and people who don’t belong on campus; and sitting on Stop signs to nab blatant violators.
Take a ride-along and learn how to avoid being ticketed. Actually, there’s no secret to it: just don’t exceed the 25 mph speed limit, come to a full stop at Stop signs, make sure your vehicle has an up-to-date inspection sticker, etc. In other words, don’t do anything you wouldn’t do if a UP officer was staring you right in the face.
On one recent ride-along, Campus Times witnessed five violations. One involved a student driving with his front license plate on his dashboard; he got a warning. So did a student who told who Lieutenant Lee she was in a hurry to get to the hospital where her grandmother had just been taken. But it isn’t as easy as that, because police have a sixth sense about who’s telling the truth and who isn’t. Lieutenant Lee decided her tears were genuine.
Tickets were issued to two drivers. The first blew a Stop sign, and then to make matters worse, gave Lieutenant Lee an attitude. The second was stopped for exceeding the speed limit. Turned out she was driving her parents’ SUV, which had an expired inspection sticker and a three-month-overdue registration. She got two tickets.
Be especially careful at Parking Lot 4, adjacent to the bus stop. When the lot is full, you can’t see the police vehicle at all. That’s where the first ticketed driver rolled through a Stop sign. Watch out at Lot 18 too.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
