Abstract
Within police departments there is particular concern about the relationship between leadership and the positive organizational outcomes of the police department, a relationship complicated by outside factors such as the cooperation of the community and political leaders (Campbell & Kodz, 2011). These same concerns exist within the police departments of colleges and universities where the crime rate has steadily increased over the last twenty-five years (Griffith, Hueston, Wilson, Moyers, & Hart, 2004). The purpose and aim of this quantitative survey study was to examine student perceptions of campus safety at two private colleges in northern New Jersey: one college that had employed an unarmed security force and one college that had employed an armed police force. The findings from this study indicated that there were significant relationships between whether the campus police force was unarmed or armed and feelings of safety from theft and violence, safety on campus, effectiveness of campus police, effectiveness of the college escort service, the effectiveness of the residence assistant. With the findings from this study, campus administrators and policy makers will be better able to determine the merits of implementing an armed police force.|Keywords: policing, campus policing, campus police leadership, campus safety