UNMPD should keep students safe, not violate their rights

Editor,

I would like to comment on the article in Thursday's Daily Lobo concerning the Kevin Boyar case. The reason the UNM Police Department is disappointed with the rulings of various motions in this case is because it makes the department look bad. UNMPD screwed up, and now it wants to justify its sloppy actions in the name of student safety.

Being a student at UNM, I understand the need for campus safety as well as the need for students to feel a sense of safety while on campus. I do not question UNMPD's motives nor do I question its concern for student safety. I do, however, question its decision making and actions concerning this case.

UNMPD arrested Boyar based off of less than reliable information that was received by a confidential informant. UNMPD failed to get the necessary warrants to not only search Boyar's home but to arrest him. UNMPD had no legal basis for arresting Boyar, and it had no legal right to do so. This is the reason, among many others, why certain motions were suppressed last week. UNMPD was wrong in how it handled this entire situation, and, legally, the police messed up in more ways than one, and now they are trying to show otherwise.

I have known Boyar for almost five years, and I know details of this case from both an inside and an outside perspective. I also know that no matter how this case turns out in court, whether the prosecution can scrape together a case, it will never turn back the events that took place last May that forever changed the course of one person's life based solely off of one unreliable informant. The information received by UNMPD was acted upon irresponsibly. Boyar's image can never be changed in the eyes of everyone who watches the news or reads the newspaper.

It frustrates me to read about this case and to hear about it on the news and know firsthand the effects it has on the people involved. It angers me to read that UNMPD is disappointed in the rulings that were made last week because it seems to me that it has no reason to be disappointed in anything except for the mistakes that it made. Student safety is not a justifiable reason when the guns in question were not on campus, and neither was Boyar when this information was received by

UNMPD. How is student safety a relevant concern when the guns in question were located off campus and seized before Boyar was even arrested by UNMPD?

In the event that UNMPD should ever be faced with such a situation again, it should take more care to ensure that while it is acting in the name of student safety, it doesn't compromise another student's rights in the process.

Jessica Schultz

UNM student