This article was updated at 12:22 p.m. Sept. 29 following an interview with Bradd Brown, chief of police.
A student claims he was questioned by campus police officers because of his skin color.
Broderick McQuarters, flute performance sophomore, was awakened at 2 a.m. Sept. 27 by officers from the Oklahoma City University Police Department in his Methodist Hall room. The officers said they were investigating two students breaking a Methodist Hall parking garage fence motion sensor.
“They barged into my room while I was asleep. I didn’t even have clothes on. They looked at me and yelled at me to get up,” McQuarters said. “They came in and went to my roommate’s side. My roommate was confused because there were two cops and an RA that wasn’t even ours standing in front of him.”
Tom Hoblin, the RA involved, said he was told not to comment by his superiors.
McQuarters said there were two officers, but only one officer is mentioned in the police report. The officer who filed the report was not one of the two in McQuarters’s room, he said. But one of the officers McQuarters said was in his room approved the report.
McQuarters said the officers entered his dorm after knocking and noticing that his door was unlocked.
“That doesn’t allow people, including police officers, to enter my room,” McQuarters said. “They could’ve waited until the morning or communicated in a calmer manner.”
There is not a report of two officers going into McQuarter’s room, Bradd Brown, chief of police, said Sept. 29.
“Generally only one officer on that type of incident would complete a report. They would put what they think are the relevant facts,” he said. “If they don’t feel it’s relevant, it’s not necessarily going to make it into a police report. They don’t record everything that’s done. They record the pertinent facts that have to do with the crime or the incident.”
McQuarters said the officers questioned him, asking him what he had been doing that night.
“I told them I came home from Cane’s with my friend,” McQuarters said. “We went through the gate of the second level parking garage of Methodist, and I went to bed.”
The police report about the broken sensor only mentions one suspect, a woman. Officer Jonathan Stewart was checking the lower garage of Methodist Hall when he noticed the gate was open and the sensor was broken, according to the report. Stewart checked surveillance video and saw someone jump the fence and run to Cokesbury Court Apartments at 11:35 p.m., the report reads.
Chief Brown said the information passed down to him reflects what was in the police report, which excludes McQuarter’s account of what happened.
“The entire time I was trying to explain to the cop that there was no possible way I could’ve done this,” McQuarters said. “If I drove in through the gate, why would I hop over the fence to get back out? It doesn’t make any logical sense.”
The description of the suspect that officers described didn’t match his appearance, McQuarters said. The police report doesn’t reference a male at all.
“He looked nothing like me,” he said. “His skin tone was so much darker than mine, and he was very thin. His hair was cut, and I have long hair.”
The officers still asked him questions, McQuarters said.
“The girl on camera was an African American. The girl that I was with was a white thinner girl that was blonde, which is exactly what they saw on camera,” he said. “It seemed to me like they were forming their questions in a way to try and get me to admit to doing something that I didn’t do. They finally gave up and left.”
Officer Stewart made contact with a different suspect at 5:30 a.m. She admitted to breaking the sensor.
University officials need to take racial bias more seriously, McQuarters said.
“Officers are here to protect us. I understand that,” he said. “However, entering my room while I’m asleep, yelling at me to get up, questioning me without any proof that it was me, and then accusing me for the crime anyways is racial profiling.”
McQuarters said Sept. 28 that he was hesitant to alert administration.
“They would’ve told me I was overreacting,” he said. “I just had to try and move on with my day because I knew there was nothing I could do about it. If I were to go and tell the administration or the police department, they would try and justify it.”
The police report about the broken sensor was forwarded to student affairs and housing for further review, according to the report.
“We encourage somebody, if they feel like something’s out of the ordinary in any of our actions, to report that to us, so either I or a supervisor can look into more details,” Chief Brown said. “We want to make sure we’re always doing the right thing and the things we need to do.”
Contributing: Miguel Rios, editor-in-chief
Its about time the campus officers are regulated. They are abusing their power, with no repercussions. This needs to end.
Hello. My name is Miguel Rios, I’m the editor-in-chief for Student Publications. If you’re comfortable with it, I would like to speak with you about your experience with campus police. You can contact me at marios@my.okcu.edu. Thank you!
Why are campus police allowed to enter a dorm room without consent? If campus officers are there to ‘make students feel safe’ there should be boundaries and regulations to make sure things like this don’t happen. OCU needs to do a better job of protecting the POC attending their institution.
Unrelated to the race issue and university police issue discussed in this article but related to consent in Methodist Hall: At the very start of the semester I had two instances where people I didn’t know were in my apartment. The first time was to see the fire sprinklers in my room after stepping out of the shower, the second time was a knock on my main (not locked) bedroom door asking to see the balcony. No emails of someone being in my apartment were sent out and no consent was given. I’ve wanted to speak out about it in the past, and I’ve even written to housing with no response. I don’t truly feel safe and have started to lock my bedroom door when I go to bed, which is stupid because my main apartment door is locked, but I’m still worried someone with a key will come in at night.
OCUPD spends more time giving out parking tickets than actually guarding parking areas. You’re more likely to see a ticket on your car in the morning than NOT see a homeless person in your building, or NOT have your laundry stolen by said homeless people. But at least they’re great at catching students who are working on projects in their classrooms past midnight! Gotta enforce those time constraints!
I had a giant lizard in my room once and I ran from it and fell in front of Freede.
I hope Mr. McQuarters considers bringing suit for violation of his 4th amendment rights. This is unacceptable in 2017, and much, much, much too common.
I don’t see how this is racial profiling. Did the officer notice through the wall that he was black before “barging” in? How did he go from barging in to only knocking and entering?
How is this disparaging and false story even published?? Editor should be fired. No evidence this had anything to do with race.
Me too man, it’s a fucking conspiracy…