EXCLUSIVE: UPenn wanted 'progressive applicants' for its police department

A hiring application at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) shows the campus police force is “seeking progressive men and women for the position of Police Officer," an archived website obtained by Campus Reform reveals.

The application does not explain how the department plans to determine whether a candidate is progressive and the site appears to have been deleted sometime after July 8. 

The university’s Division of Public Safety (DPS) website currently states the police department is looking for “progressive applicants for the position of Police Officer.” 

No mention of “progressive” applicants is made again on the employment page. 

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Hiring “progressive” candidates is a recent new move by UPenn's Police Department (UPPD), however, its policies show a pattern of pushing a leftist agenda throughout the department. 

DPS’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion states that it, “recognizes the history of oppression that has resulted in ongoing disparities for some communities…as a collective, we can remove barriers that perpetuate inequity, injustice, and exclusivity.”

The “UPPD Directives,” is a list of nearly 50 directives officers must adhere to on duty. They contain blatant attempts to radicalize the police force.

Officers are required to attend diversity training, according to UPPD’s directive regarding academic and procedural standards. Additionally, UPPD’s recruitment plan is filled with language regarding minority quotas and Affirmative Action.

In the directive, recruiters must be “knowledgeable in personnel matters, especially Affirmative Action” and the Captain of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Nicole McCoy must review recruitment plans.

One of UPPD’s goals is to “​​[maintain] ethnic and gender composition in approximate proportion to our service community.” The plan states that this goal is achieved by “a systematic method of seeking qualified applicants and adding those qualified applicants to an eligibility list.” 

“Qualified applicants” are not defined in the recruitment directive, nor does the plan explain the criteria used to ensure the department retains its “ethnic and gender composition.” 

The department does keep a “ratio of minority group employees in approximate proportion… [to] UPPD’s law enforcement service community.” They do this by, “actively participat[ing] in the University’s Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Plans.”

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In UPPD’s policy discussing officer “interactions with transgender individuals,” UPenn officers are required to address trans individuals by their preferred pronouns and chosen name “rather than [that] which is on their government-issued identification.”

If a transgender individual has had a “gender conforming/affirming surgery” officers must list the chosen sex instead of the biological sex on their official report detailing the incident. The section, “Transportation, Detention, And Processing” states that transgender detainees will be given their own cell. 

“Supervisors shall make all efforts to ensure that the [transgender] prisoner is held without other prisoners,” the policy states. 

Officers are not allowed to “Use language that a reasonable person would consider demeaning or derogatory; in particular, language aimed at a person’s actual or perceived gender, gender identity/expression, or sexual orientation.” 

The directive does not define “reasonable person” or elaborate on what specific language might violate this directive. However, it does include a list of terms used in the LGBTQ community that the university deems officers should be familiar with. 

“Sexual orientation,” “Gender Expression,” “Gender non-conforming,” and “Biphobia” are some of the terms officers at UPenn are required to learn. 

Words like “cross-dresser” are to be used by officers in instances when the individual in question is not “living as members” of the opposite sex, the university states.  

UPPD’s “bias-based profiling” directive requires the Captain of Patrol to submit a monthly report of “aggregate data of all pedestrian and vehicular stops” including “percentages of stops made for every ethnic group and gender” so the Superintendent of Police can determine if there have been any violations. 

Officers also receive annual training regarding “racial and ethnic stereotypes” and ways that officers can overcome their “stereotypic behaviors” such as “personal or perceived bias…[being] used as the sole basis for probable cause or reasonable suspicion.”

Campus Reform spoke with Ben Zeisloft, alumni of UPenn, Daily Wire Staff reporter, and former Campus Reform Correspondent. Zeisloft said he was “astonished” by UPPD’s policies. 

“As a Penn alumnus and a current resident of University City, I am astonished by Penn Police's brazen disregard for protecting students and other residents. I have lived in Philadelphia since the fall of 2018 and can testify that crime and public safety has become markedly worse near Penn's campus," Zeisloft said. 

“[C]ritical social justice” is a “gangrene that pollutes every institution it touches,” he explained. “Rather than bowing to the absurdities of left-wing ideology, Penn Police should be tirelessly ensuring that students are safe on and around campus.”

Campus Reform contacted UPenn and the Division of Public Safety and will update this article accordingly.

Follow @kliseanderson on Twitter.