Amherst Police Capt. Jennifer Gundersen visits class

By Julia Marion

In the case of noisy off-campus house parties, the Amherst Police Department is the place to call. With a semester that has seen great fall weather and the largest freshman class ever seen, it may be needless to say that the Amherst police have been keeping busy this 2010-2011 academic year. Although there are often complaints from students about cops, there are certain procedures which Amherst police must follow in response to a noise complaint from residents.

Jennifer Gundersen is the police captain who often attends to these calls. Marking the beginning of her seventeenth year on the force this December, she started out in the detective bureau where she was the officer that reporters would go to for questions. Nowadays, students might come to her for a class assignment. On Nov. 22, 2010, she switched it up a bit by personally visiting the Journalism 300 class in the University of Massachusetts W.E.B Du Bois library. She talked about what type of calls she receives as well as trying to satisfy both Amherst residents and students in a fair manner. In her talk with the class, she related how there are both positives and negatives to a college town such as Amherst.

As captain of a town police, Gundersen is responsible for keeping Amherst residents safe and happy. “We have a unique challenge as you can expect. We have 25,000 students in college and also a very demanding citizen base. We often have to switch gears for them.” This means that if conflicts between residents and off-campus students arise, the Amherst PD is obliged to step in. “Our community are the taxpaying citizens of Amherst. The community guides our response. If they think there is a nuisance, we think there is a nuisance. They set our priorities,” she said.

The most common scenes involving both residents and students are noise complaints. Oftentimes, a residential neighbor of an off-campus house will call in around 1 a.m. complaining of a large amount of noise. These calls are most likely to occur between Thursday and Sunday nights. Amherst police consider this type of complaint to be a disturbance of the peace and are therefore required to “quell the disturbance” even though they have better things to do.

“We don’t make noise complaints up,” said Capt. Gundersen. “We have to have a valid reporting party and we don’t respond if the caller does not want to reveal their name.” The procedure to breaking up a house party is standard and most parties will quiet down after the initial warning. Arrests are only made if the owner of the house is uncooperative or fails to even open the door.

Although rowdy students provide Amherst police with a job, they also provide a liability and an economic disadvantage. “Weather dictates the activity. In the spring we hope for rain every weekend. We also hope for the Red Sox to lose. Just one weekend can drain our budget as overtime has to be paid for some officers.” Graduation parties can also be a lot of work. But on the upside, graduation traffic brings in a lot of business for the town.

Despite the authority of the police, Gundersen does acknowledge that some officers do overstep their boundaries. She said that about 10 percent of the time when there is a complaint, officers are at fault and are provided a counseling session before being disciplined. As long as students are cooperative with police, there should be no problems.

The Amherst PD has its own blog at Amherstpd.blogspot.com where information can be shared and received within the community.

Questions for Capt. Gundersen

1) What are the reasons why this is one of the worst falls ever, according to police quoted in a recent Amherst Bulletin article.

2) What re the mostcommon calls to police in general and this year as compared with other years?

3)What could be done to improve the situation that is or is not being done now?

4) What rights do students have that they may not know about?

5) Have you seen complaints about students' rights being infringed upon?

6) What is the proper way to respond to police when stopped?

7) What is an officer suppposed to say and do when arriving at a house party? That is,
what are the police told to do by the deparment when they go to a huge house party? And to what extent do they use individual initiative rather than standard procedure?

8) Do the Amherst and UMass police have substantially different policies and procedures?

9) Why did you want to become a police officer?

10) Has your gender been a major factor?

11) How do you choose what's newsworthy to put on the blog?

12) Before you were a captain did you respond to any of the house party calls?

13) Have you ever been injured during a call, suited up in riot gear, use a taser or pepper spray?

David Pakman visits Journ 201

University of Massachusetts alum David Pakman's mother was the only one he could say for sure listened to his radio show when he got started at Valley Free Radio, in Northampton, in 2005.
And even she couldn't muster much enthusiasm when he asked her how he liked it.
Pakman didn't blame her.
"All I was doing was reading the news -- and not very well," he told two dozen or so Introduction to Journalism students at his alma mater this week. He was too nervous to even add any political commentary of his own, at first.
Now, The David Pakman Show, formerly known as Midweek Politics with David Pakman, airs on over 100 radio and TV stations nationwide; he's got over 2,500 subscribers to his Internet podcasts and some of his recent YouTube videos have gotten 20,000 or more hits within several days of him posting them.
In September, Pakman, 26; his producer and childhood friend Louis Motamedi and Pakman's brother and film producer Natan Pakman moved into their own studio in Northampton, underwritten by Greenfield Savings Bank.
Pakman, who graduated in 2006 with a degree in economics and communications and then got his MBA at Bentley, is also a consultant who helps other media personalities, includingThom Hartman, the country's Number 1 progressive radio show host, expand their audiences.
Pakman said he would be happy to give the students advice for free. He's also looking for for-credit interns and is registered with the UMass Office of Career Services.
The easiest place to start your own radio show is at a community radio station, Pakman said.
"Not many people will listen at first, but you'll get practice."
He recommends posting videos on YouTube, even if it's just an audio radio show with still photographs.
And then promote your show relentlessly.
Pakman has found that email is his best form of contact and he is constantly soliciting guests for his show.
Some of the people he thinks are least likely to respond to him have been the most enthusiastic about being on the show, Ohio Congressman and former Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, for example. He's also interviewed U.S. Sen. John Kerry, Congressman Barney Frank and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.
Others have not been as responsive, for example Michael Moore.
Pakman doesn't sweat it when he doesn't hear back from someone, he just keeps trying to get in touch with them. He sends out a regular newsletter, using the email marketing service Constant Contact, which allows him to see who opens his emails and who ignores them.
Some of his best guests have been the ones whose points of view he agrees with the least -- anti-Semites, white supremacists, anti-gay rights activists, and the like.
"Anytime I can argue with someone, I will," Pakman said.
Likewise, some of his most loyal listeners claim to hate the show.
"The people who don't like what I'm doing are more responsible for the success of the show than the people like me," Pakman said. Someone named Butch, for example, has been emailing him for years, expressing how much he can't stand it.
Pakman doesn't engage with detractors like Butch, he just thanks them.
After all, Pakman said, "He listens to the show more than my mom."