We see them quoted in newspapers, directing traffic and hanging out at local eateries. Let's do some quick math. There are currently 18 campus police officers and some 26,000 students at the university. That's roughly one officer per 1,440 students. Yet this gap is not the problem.
Campus police are visible daily driving up and down, all around campus.
They admirably perform their duties on a campus where they are vastly outnumbered. Whenever a fire breaks out or there is traffic to direct, we can count on our public safety officials to be there. Spotting an officer merely walking a beat on campus is as rare as finding a squirrel that refuses a handout. Their absence from sight doesn't breed any sense of camaraderie with the student body or instill a sense of safety among them. The police seem to function as a phantom entity that appears only in the face of danger, like Batman.