NC lawmakers seek private college police openness

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina legislators have started working on a bill making campus police at private colleges as transparent about arrests and emergency calls as their peers at public universities and municipal law enforcement agencies.

A House committee approved legislation Wednesday to make campus police departments at private colleges as responsible as other police to produce public records upon request.

The legislation comes three weeks after the North Carolina Supreme Court heard arguments in a case challenging a decision by Elon University police to withhold information about a 19-year-old student's arrest for underage drinking and resisting an officer. The campus police said they did not have to produce all the data requested because a state law requiring government agencies to turn over public records did not apply to private universities.