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Crossing the Line

Is public accountability the price of a safe campus?

Take a ten-minute walk, and learn something interesting about Harvard and its law enforcement agency.

Begin at Eliot House. If you're a victim of a crime there, the Harvard University Police Department will investigate, and hopefully, arrest your perpetrator.

Walk outside Eliot House and step onto J.F.K. Street. You're now on roads patrolled by the Cambridge Police Department.

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Amble a few steps south and drag your foot along the curb of Memorial Drive. You're in the territory of the Massachusetts State Police.

Walk about a hundred yards to the Weeks Footbridge. Cross the small bridge and hop onto the sidewalk on the opposite side--and you're in the Boston Police Department's purview.

That's four separate police agencies, all protecting the crossroads of the world's most powerful university.

But HUPD is different from its partners.

Its 51 officers have police powers as deputy sheriffs in 52 towns and cities in Middlesex and Suffolk counties, giving the department a larger jurisdiction than most every municipal Massachusetts police department.

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