Harvard Police Face Internal Probe After Alleged Racial Incident

An incident earlier this month has raised concerns about Harvard University Police Department's treatment of racial minorities on campus, leading University President Drew G. Faust to announce the creation of a six-member committee to review HUPD's practices.

“The review will include consideration of HUPD's diversity training, community outreach, and recruitment efforts, as well as the ways in which Harvard's past experience as well as best practices elsewhere can help inform our future practice,” Faust wrote in an e-mail to faculty and senior-level administration.

The committee will be led by Ralph C. Martin II, the former Suffolk County district attorney and currently a managing partner at the Boston law firm, Bingham McCutchen.

Faust wrote that the review was in part prompted by an incident that occurred Aug. 8 in which HUPD officers, responding to a call, confronted a person attempting to remove a lock from a bicycle with tools.

According to the HUPD police log, the individual was found to be the owner of the bicycle and an affiliate of the university after questioning by officers. The person has since been identified as a black high school student from the Boston area working at Harvard for the summer. Faust wrote that an investigation into the interaction between the officers and the student has been launched.

One source with knowledge of the situation said that "the conversation between the individual and the officers was laced with obscenities" and that the officers have been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into how they handled the incident.

HUPD spokesman Steven G. Catalano wrote in an e-mail that the department is enthusiastic about the review.

“The review will provide the Department with an invaluable opportunity to benefit from Mr. Martin's expertise and to hear in new ways from the Harvard community about how we might better serve our diverse population,” he wrote. “We look forward to any recommendations generated by process that will help ensure the HUPD remains as effective as possible.”

Joining Martin on the committee are William F. Lee '72 , a former member of the Harvard Board of Overseers and co-managing partner of the large Boston law firm WilmerHale; Mark H. Moore, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School; government department chair Nancy L. Rosenblum; Matthew L. Sundquist '09, president of the Undergraduate Council; and Harvard Law School professor David B. Wilkins '77.

The incident with the bike marks the second racially-charged incident the department has faced in recent memory.

In May 2007, Harvard students called HUPD during a field day hosted by black student organizations on the Radcliffe Quadrangle, causing an uproar among black students and faculty. HUPD officers reportedly asked students for their identification and asked students if they had permission to be there.

S. Allen Counter, the director of the Harvard Foundation and a Harvard Medical School professor, wrote in a subsequent Crimson editorial piece that "these students felt collectively 'profiled' by race and asked the simple question, 'if fifty or more white students were engaged in similar activities would they have been approached by the police?'"

Counter noted that the year before, a black professor "was stopped by HUPD in the middle of the day in Harvard Yard and forced to show his identification."

"A recurrent complaint brought to our office by African-Americans students is that they are regularly stopped and asked to produce identification by HUPD and security guards while their white peers are not subjected to such scrutiny," Counter wrote.

—Paras D. Bhayani contributed to the reporting of this story.
—Staff writer Jamison A. Hill can be reached at jahill@fas.harvard.edu.