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George Washington University has been moving toward arming all the supervising officers on its police force for about a year.
Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
George Washington University’s police chief, James Tate, has resigned, days after being placed on leave amid allegations that the university’s police department made numerous errors in the process of arming its officers.
Allegations of the botched implementation, as well as news of Tate’s suspension and subsequent resignation, were first reported by The Hatchet, GWU’s student newspaper.
In a Tuesday announcement about Tate’s resignation, university officials did not offer an explanation for why he stepped down. Nor did they say why he had been placed on leave in an email sent to the police department Friday, which The Hatchet obtained and shared with Inside Higher Ed.
The change in leadership comes shortly after The Hatchet published accounts from six former members of the police department, as well as human resources documents, claiming that efforts to arm police officers over the past year were mishandled. Among other concerns, the allegations included claims that Tate “routinely” stored his weapon improperly and that he and a police captain, Gabe Mullinax, carried weapons at the onset of the rollout that had not been registered with the city of Washington, D.C.
The city’s Metropolitan Police Department told Inside Higher Ed via email that the first GWPD weapons were registered on Sept. 29, 2023, about a month after the university announced Tate and his colleague had begun carrying their weapons.
Administrators told the Faculty Senate that the university has launched an investigation into the firearms-implementation process after one senator, Philip W. Wirtz, a professor in the School of Business, asked about the Hatchet article, according to minutes from the Oct. 4 Faculty Senate meeting.
In a statement emailed to Inside Higher Ed, university spokesperson Julia Metjian said concerns raised during the initial phase of the implementation last October had been “investigated, addressed and resolved prior to moving to phase two of arming the GWPD,” but she did not clarify what those concerns entailed.
“We can also confirm that the university is looking into several new questions regarding the GWPD that have been recently raised, and will retain a third-party expert to conduct an assessment of actions taken to ensure safety and compliance during the arming process,” she wrote. “This firm will also conduct a review of existing training protocols, which meet the District of Columbia’s standards for police officers, in the interest of strengthening and continually improving the preparedness of our police force.”
Long-Term Pushback
The decision to arm GWPD officers has been controversial since it was first announced in April 2023, when then-president Mark S. Wrighton said the decision was inspired by rising gun violence nationwide—especially at K-12 schools and institutions of higher education—and a desire to respond more quickly to threats on campus rather than rely on city law enforcement.
Many students and faculty opposed the decision; 20 student organizations argued in a letter to administrators that arming officers put the GW community at risk of police violence. They also noted that there had been no incidents on campus in the previous year that would have necessitated the use of deadly weapons.
“The vast majority of instances in which GWPD is called to action are to resolve conflicts and pacify intoxicated students. If GWPD is responsible for protecting students’ safety on campus, they would have the capacity for de-escalation practices,” the organizations wrote, demanding the university reverse its plan to arm officers. “The presence of guns on campus can only put students at risk of gun violence.”
More than 200 faculty members signed a similar letter, and in October 2023, the Faculty Senate passed a resolution asking administrators to pause the rollout until the university released data it had collected reflecting the community’s views and feedback on the plan to arm campus cops.
GW isn’t alone; as private, armed police forces have become more common on campuses across the country, students, employees and external community members have pushed back, expressing similar concerns. In the spring, many critics felt their worries were validated when university police officers, often alongside local law enforcement, arrested student protesters at pro-Palestinian encampments across the country, in some cases using force. At GW, city police used pepper spray to clear out an encampment and arrest 33 individuals in May.
Despite the criticism, GWU’s process moved forward in three phases. First, at the start of the 2023 academic year, Tate and Mullinax began carrying weapons, according to a Sept. 1, 2023, press release. Then in early February of this year, the GWPD armed five more officers. The rollout was finally completed last month, with the arming of all supervisory officers (those in nonsupervisory roles do not carry weapons).
On Sept. 30, however, The Hatchet published an investigation featuring accounts from former officers who said they had witnessed several shortcomings in the implementation process. For one, they claimed, the 56-hour firearms training the officers had undergone was insufficient, designed more for security guards than police. In addition, one former lieutenant cited a dearth of training in de-escalation and in responding to active shooter situations.
The student newspaper also reported that Mullinax had filed two HR reports, one about the unregistered guns—which he said he stopped using once he realized they weren’t registered with the city—and the second about Tate’s unsafe gun storage practices.
Faculty expressed concern about the allegations included in The Hatchet’s reporting. Wirtz, the professor who inquired about the claims at the Oct. 4 Faculty Senate meeting, told Inside Higher Ed in an email that he doesn’t know what to think about the situation yet.
“If the allegations reported in The Hatchet are correct, this is deeply disturbing. President [Ellen] Granberg was asked if the allegations are correct, and she promised to investigate promptly. She neither confirmed nor denied the allegations, so until we hear about the results of the investigation they remain ‘allegations reported by The Hatchet,’” he said.
But he’s worried that the full story won’t come out even after the investigation is complete.
“President Granberg has not given the Senate a clear assurance that it will,” he wrote. “The GW administration will need to be fully transparent about this issue: failure to give the Senate the full report would create a suspicion that would be impossible to quell.”
