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Florida’s 28 State and Community colleges are asking lawmakers for 74 million dollars to beef up security across the state. As Mike Vasilinda tells us, only a few of the campuses have a sworn law enforcement presence.

Tis the week before Christmas and across the state, college campuses are all but empty and closed…But despite the calm, here at Tallahassee Community College, police officers remain alert. We asked TCC Police Chief Chris Summers “How many officers do you have?”. “Including me, make twelve” he responded.

The TCC Campus, in the shadow of the state Capitol, is one of the few that maintains a full time police force,

“And for the most part, we can see most of our population areas on campus. We exercise frequently” says the Chief.

Following shootings on campuses in Oregon, California and even Florida State. The state’s 28 colleges want an armed presence on every campus. 18 months ago, someone with a gun was reported on campus.

“We were fortunate in that nobody was injured” says Summers.

The gun carrying student was charged and kicked out of school.

“And we’ve made a few arrests for domestic battery, assault, or stalking. And the vast majority is something that began off (campus)” says Chief Summers.

What’s clear is that there isn’t an outbreak of crime at this or other college campuses, but the chief says his biggest role is intervening before bad things happen.”

The budget for a police presence at TCC runs about a million dollars a year, and if he had a wish list for some of the 74 million being sought, it would be for more officers to keep problems from growing.

The effort to allow guns on campuses spurred the request for security money, but in a statement, Michael Brawer (Braw-Er), the CFO for the Assn of Fl. Colleges says “we have come to accept that currently there is a trend for bad people to bad things in public areas, and our colleges need to be better prepared in the areas of training for active shooter scenarios for college faculty, staff and students, better threat assessment and reporting mechanisms to pre-empt situations”.