Updated: March 6, 2025, at 2:06 p.m.
University President Ellen Granberg on Tuesday released findings from a third-party investigation of the GW Police Department’s arming rollout that confirmed reports of departmental gun safety concerns and revealed officials’ disregard for community input on the arming decision.
The four-page report by law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher confirmed The Hatchet’s reporting from September 2024 on firearm safety violations and turnover within GWPD that appeared to spark the resignation of the force’s chief, James Tate, weeks later. The report states that University officials chose not to seek community feedback before the Board of Trustees directed GWPD to arm about 20 officers in April 2023 because they expected opposition to the controversial decision.
“The community, including the Board of Trustees, deserved better and for this, I am sorry,” Granberg said in a Tuesday email to community members.
Trustees’ decision to arm the force — which former interim University President Mark Wrighton said was a response to growing gun violence across the country and on college campuses — was met with protests, dissenting letters, criticism of the lack of community consultation and demands to see the data that backed the decision.
Granberg said University leaders’ failure to “meaningfully and adequately” engage the GW community before and after trustees’ decision to arm GWPD was a “common and consistent theme” of the investigation’s findings.
GW retained a third-party firm in October 2024 — which officials identified as Willkie Farr in November — to investigate GWPD’s arming implementation, training protocols and “several new questions” raised after The Hatchet’s September investigation found previously undisclosed safety violations and internal disarray.
The investigation, led by Willkie Farr partner Timothy Heaphy, confirmed that GWPD failed to register the guns carried by its top two officers, delaying the arming rollout, and that Tate violated department policies by storing a loaded weapon. The findings also echoed former officers’ reports of insufficient firearms training and high turnover due to a poor workplace culture.
Former officers have said they internally reported these issues for more than a year starting in September 2023, which they said officials didn’t take seriously until The Hatchet published their allegations last fall.
Willkie Farr conducted 43 interviews and reviewed more than 820,000 documents for the investigation, the report states. It recommends that officials consider arming all GWPD officers — aborting its current hybrid model, which Tate reportedly proposed without soliciting input, in which only about 20 officers carry guns.
The investigation also advises that officials ensure their communication with community members on significant policy changes is “formalized and embraced.”
“It is not always possible, nor wise, to collect campuswide feedback on every issue,” Granberg said in her email. “But the level of engagement in this circumstance was clearly not sufficient.”
Granberg said the law firm conducted the investigation under privilege and that certain findings, like those related to personnel matters, will remain confidential. She said “select senior administrators” have seen the full report, which Heaphy briefed trustees and the “GW Cabinet” on.
A University spokesperson declined to share the full report with The Hatchet.
“It has been shared with senior decision-making officials who have been charged with responding to its recommendations,” the spokesperson said.
GWPD’s website, once a standalone page, now redirects to a GWPD tab housed in the campus safety webpage. The “Enhancing Public Safety” webpage, which outlines the department’s arming implementation plans and was previously located on GWPD’s website, is now under the safety website’s “reports” tab.
A University spokesperson said the GWPD website redirected to this webpage as of Feb. 21. It’s unclear why officials took down the standalone GWPD site.
Report finds officials failed to solicit community input on arming
The report states that former University President Thomas LeBlanc hired Tate in January 2020 “with an ‘eye towards arming.’”
Tate first raised the possibility of arming GWPD officers with trustees in September 2021, according to the report. But Provost Chris Bracey said in an interview after an April 2023 Faculty Senate meeting following the arming announcement that trustees began considering arming GWPD in June 2022.
The report states that there was a proposed timeline for engagement with the GW community when Tate raised the notion of arming in September 2021, but that “very few steps toward such engagement were taken.” University officials ultimately “decided not to” engage the community before announcing the arming plan in April 2023 because they believed members would disagree with the decision, the investigation found.
The report states that trustees voted to arm officers in February 2023, two months before announcing the decision to the community, after a mass shooting on Michigan State University’s campus in which armed campus police were “widely credited with saving lives.”
But trustees received “little information” about community engagement before the vote “despite repeated requests,” because University leaders believed that a “fulsome discussion” of potential arming with stakeholders would be “universally negative” and “derail” GWPD’s arming, the report states.
The investigation found that officials instead intended to involve the community in the arming rollout — without revisiting the initial decision — but those interviewed for the investigation reported that engagement efforts during the implementation phase were “insufficient and one-directional.”
Tate said in April 2023 that he discussed the arming decision with the Student Government Association, Black Student Union and Fraternity and Sorority Life leaders ahead of the announcement. Trustees told the Faculty Senate Executive Committee in February 2023 that they were discussing arming before briefing the committee about their final decision in April.
GWPD solicited input on the decision via online form in May 2023 and reviewed feedback during the summer of 2023, releasing a summary of feedback but no complete collection of responses.
The force also adjusted GWPD’s use of force policy and training protocols and announced the Campus Safety Advisory Committee in August 2023, though the committee didn’t meet until July 2024 and members didn’t discuss the arming decision, despite officials saying the committee intended to “increase engagement on safety concerns.”
Officials also held conversations with staff and students in September 2023 as they armed the force’s top two officers.
Faculty senators sounded alarms about officials’ lack of community consultation on the arming decision in October 2023, alleging trustees violated shared governance principles — which senators approved in April to outline expectations for communication and collaboration between officials, trustees and faculty on University issues.
The investigation found that “consistent discontent” with the process that informed the arming decision strained relationships and diminished trust at GW. Due to the lack of engagement, faculty, students, staff and community groups criticized the decision, the report states.
More than 450 Milken Institute School of Public Health Community members argued the Board overlooked relevant data and “nuances” of gun violence in its decision to arm. More than 200 professors urged trustees to reverse the decision because they left insufficient time for community input. More than 150 students marched through campus in opposition, saying arming officers would endanger the GW community.
Increasing the presence of firearms in all settings results in a higher likelihood of fatal violence, according to the American Public Health Association. Armed guards in school settings are not associated with a decrease in injury or death during mass shootings, according to research reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“GW leadership must get better at meaningfully and adequately engaging broader parts of the community when considering major institutional decisions such as arming,” Granberg said.
Report details yearslong poor GWPD morale
GWPD has “struggled with morale and definitional issues for many years,” the investigation found. The report centers on a debate within the force and among officials on whether GWPD should be an unarmed security service that relies on the Metropolitan Police Department, or an armed “professional police department with robust training.”
In September, former officers said limited training lowers morale and was one of the biggest contributors to turnover.
The findings state that officials commissioned “several reviews” of GWPD over the years by outside experts, and implemented “few” of the observations or recommendations to change the “culture of low morale.”
Frequent transitions of GWPD and broader University leadership exacerbated morale issues, the report states. GWPD changed its leader four times in the two years before 2020. Four of the department’s top six officers have left in the last year, and Ryan Monteiro, a former sergeant who left in May, said six sergeants departed around the time he did.
GWPD’s executive leadership changed twice amid the department’s internal disarray. Former Chief Administration Officer Sharon Paulsen left her position around December 2023 and Vice President for Safety and Operations Baxter Goodly took over on Jan. 1, 2024. CFO Bruno Fernandes oversaw the department during the transition period, former officers said in October.
In 2014, former officers filed a series of discrimination complaints against GWPD, officers complaining of an “us vs. them” culture that divided low-ranking officials from leadership.
“My fellow Revs, the failures around the GWPD arming program offer us an important learning opportunity, and we will be a better, stronger community as a result,” Granberg said.
Report recommendations
Granberg said Tuesday that the University of Virginia Chief of Police and Associate Vice President for Safety and Security Timothy Longo developed recommendations for GWPD’s future, which officials will consider implementing to improve GW’s arming program and community safety.
The findings recommend that officials consider arming all GWPD officers to “more adequately protect public safety,” moving away from its hybrid model in which only about 20 top supervisory officers carry firearms.
The report also recommends moving all campus security services under GWPD instead of hiring a third-party security contractor to form two types of officers — some armed and equipped with academy training, and others unarmed, providing security and support services. GW contracted Allied Universal Security to assign security officers to residence halls, Tate said in 2021.
The report states that the hybrid model was solely Tate’s proposal and did not stem from a “reasoned internal discussion of the pros and cons” of the approach, but instead Tate’s belief that the GW community would not be comfortable with a fully armed police force. Tate had not consulted University leadership or other stakeholders when crafting the proposal, meaning it was the sole plan that trustees evaluated, the report states.
The report states that Wrighton and Paulsen believed that arming supervisors should be a first step toward arming the entire department. But they did not “promote discussion” of that approach and allowed Tate to bring the hybrid recommendation to the Board, according to the report.
The report advises GWPD to consider creating a mental health response team and a rapid response unit. Tate said in April 2023 that GWPD officers refer mental health-related dispatches to EMeRG instead of intervening directly, which can be “overwhelming” for the subject.
The report also recommends that GWPD hire a dedicated training officer. Former officers said in September that GWPD’s firearms training left officers unprepared to respond to major emergencies like an active shooter.
The University has also created an associate vice president for campus safety role to “increase public safety coordination,” per the report. Granberg said the position would oversee departments like Environmental Health & Safety, Emergency Management, GWorld and the Office of Advocacy and Support. An announcement about the new role and the search for the next GWPD chief is “forthcoming,” she said.
Former officers react to investigation findings
Monteiro, the former sergeant, said the report doesn’t reveal any new information for former officers, other than Tate’s proposal of the hybrid arming model. He said the findings “minimize” the former chief’s storage of his loaded firearm, which could’ve ended “so badly” and injured officers.
Monteiro said it would be “ideal” for GWPD to arm all officers, as the report recommends, but that he wouldn’t recommend it because the department’s current officers are security guards acting as special police officers since D.C. law only requires special police to undergo 56 hours of training.
“I’m kind of surprised that the law firm didn’t dig a little more into why the entire police department shouldn’t be armed,” Monteiro said. “They’re not correct in their assessment unless they wanted to abolish the entire police department and rebuild it from the ground up with real police officers.”
Monteiro said despite the investigation and Tate’s resignation, it appears that “nothing has changed” in the department, adding that he remains in touch with current officers who’ve told him that department morale has worsened since Tate left.
He said interim Chief of Police Ian Greenlee never carried a gun before coming to GWPD since he was previously a supervisor at American University’s Police Department, an unarmed special police unit.
Two former officers said officials train current GWPD officers to carry guns by sending them to police academies in Maryland, which omits D.C.-specific training.
“It doesn’t change anything, like, you still have pretty much untrained people walking around with firearms on your campus,” Monteiro said.
Chris Hunsicker, a former lieutenant who left GWPD in August, said GW should have either fully armed the department or not armed it at all. But Hunsicker said the “current caliber” of officers is “not where it needs to be” for them to carry guns, meaning the force would need a “much more robust” hiring process, which the report doesn’t address.
“Why would the Board of Trustees agree to arm the entire department if the first part wasn’t done appropriately?” Hunsicker said.
Former Captain of Operations Gabe Mullinax, who left the department in April, said he was “pleased” to see that the findings included his recommendations for GWPD, particularly the separation of security and law enforcement duties and the addition of a dedicated training officer.
“I have no doubt that GWPD has the potential to become a premier, highly collaborative and supportive community-based policing agency,” Mullinax said in a text message.
This post has been updated to reflect the following:
The Hatchet incorrectly reported that GWPD’s standalone website, including its “Enhancing Public Safety” webpage, is now offline and redirects to GW’s campus safety webpage. GWPD’s website is no longer a standalone site but redirects to a GWPD tab housed in the campus safety webpage, and the “Enhancing Public Safety” section is under the website’s “reports” tab. The Hatchet also incorrectly reported that in April 2023 Bracey told the Faculty Senate that trustees began considering arming GWPD in June 2022. Bracey told The Hatchet this information in an interview after the April 2023 meeting. We regret these errors.
This post has also been updated to include context from a University spokesperson on when GWPD’s website began redirecting to the campus safety webpage.
