My most common gripe involves some variation on the following:
<After the video, Sergeant Rick Bauer of the UTD Police Department answered questions from the students, stating, among other points that on street encounters in Richardson one does not have to show ID, however, on the UTD campus, it is required.>
Required in what capacity? _Legally_ required or required by UTD of UTD students?
This is exactly the kind of confusion I see all the time. The complete apathy regarding where the police's legal authority ends and administrative authority begins. All too often, they (the administration and the police) would prefer everyone forgot the distinction.
If you refuse to show ID/<any other strictly UTD policy but not Richardson law> on the UTD campus, are you breaking the law, or just breaking UTD's rules? Then, if the officer insists that you show ID/the other thing, are you then resisting police authority, or just school authority? Could you be resisting a police officer? How can you be sure? Odds are, you are just going to comply to be on the safe side. And what if you aren't a UTD student in the first place?
People need to be very careful of delineating legal authority from administrative authority on issues surrounding colleges and universities, where police act both as 'real' police and as rule-enforcers for the university. It is all too easy and completely commonplace to see police attempt, deliberately or not, to use their real, legal authority in the enforcement of what aren't actually laws, which is equivalent to the organization (university) literally buying out the police authority for use in enforcing their rules. The danger in this should be clear. Can I buy some police authority too?