URI police begin to bear arms

Rhode Island – Starting Friday the University of Rhode Island police will began to carry firearms , after two years of training and preparation. Still the union that represents the faculty express their disagreement to the security guards on campus have firearms. URI is the last public university in the country to arm its agents.

The move to arm police came after a false alarm in 2013, when some students in a lecture hall thought they heard someone say they had a gun, setting off a panic on URI’s bucolic campus in South Kingstown. While campus police arrived at the scene in less than a minute, it took about five minutes for armed police from South Kingstown to arrive. No gun was ever found.