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.
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