Graduate student workers at Johns Hopkins University say the school has used its armed private police force has been used to intimidate and surveil student activists and union members, part of what organizers describe as a growing campaign of union-busting on campus and an example of how the police force is used to control students and workers in the name of “public safety.”
The Johns Hopkins University Police Department — Maryland’s first armed private university police force — has been a flashpoint since it was approved by state lawmakers in 2019. The university argued it was necessary to ensure campus safety, but community members, students and faculty protested it from the beginning, warning that as a private police force it will only be accountable to university leadership rather than local residents.
The JHUPD operates under a 2022 agreement signed with the Baltimore Police Department when it was still a state agency. But in 2024, after more than 150 years without control of its own police force, Baltimore voters returned control of BPD to the city, opening the door for more oversight on the department and its policies.
Union organizers say JHUPD has increasingly been used to crack down on free speech, pointing to a pattern they say began during the spring when officers were used to silence union organizing during commencement. On May 22, JHUPD targeted graduate student workers handing out flyers calling for Hopkins to stop “slashing budgets while pumping millions into private police,” following them and threatening to have them arrested for trespassing on campus despite their affiliation with the university.
These allegations fueled a new push, led by the Baltimore Abolition Movement, to bring oversight to and abolish the college police department, which residents say has quietly expanded its footprint in recent months and is adding up to 30 officers in 2025.
“Since we launched the petition in July, we’ve got nearly 1,000 individual signatures from folks in Baltimore, as well as over 30 community organizations that have endorsed,” said Jack Lewis, a Baltimore resident and BAM organizer. “There has not really been a true democratic forum up to this point.”
Members of Teachers and Researchers United, which represents 3,300 graduate student workers at Hopkins, say university police are regularly used against lawful labor actions. On October 22, roughly 100 union members marched to the Office of Institutional Equity to deliver a grievance against Hopkins for hiring the anti-union law firm Franczek and interfering in internal union business The union says the Hopkins Office of Institutional Equity opened an investigation into the union after it voted on March 5 to divest the union’s finances from Israel over its genocide in Gaza. The investigation was opened after the union excluded non-union members from the vote, which is in line with the union’s bylaws.
“Every grievance now risks coming with a police report,” Madhani said. “They’ve effectively criminalized our workplace disputes.”
According to the union, the demonstration quickly became one of the most heavily policed labor actions since graduate workers overwhelmingly voted to unionize by a 97% margin in 2023. Ten JHUPD officers, backed by campus security with cameras, followed marchers, demanded they unmask and identify themselves, and physically blocked access to the building where the grievance was to be delivered.
Hopkins did not respond to new questions about alleged police involvement in labor disputes or the status of the memorandum of understanding with BPD.
“They called it ‘keeping order,’ but what we experienced was surveillance and harassment,” said Janvi Madhani, graduate-worker steward with TRU, who was among the students targeted during the May 22 action. “When police barricade a door to stop workers from filing a grievance, that’s union busting.”
“Every grievance now risks coming with a police report,” Madhani said. “They’ve effectively criminalized our workplace disputes.”
Other campus unions have joined the Baltimore Abolition Movement campaign, including 1199SEIU, which represents 2,000 healthcare workers at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and UNITE HERE Local 7, representing hospitality and food-service workers across Baltimore, including at university-affiliated facilities.
Community leaders say the police expansion also undermines public accountability.
At a joint meeting earlier this month of three community associations that neighbor the Homewood campus, Councilmember Odette Ramos announced she would co-sponsor a resolution introduced by Councilmember James Torrence requiring informational hearings on every memorandum of understanding the Baltimore Police Department has with private institutions, including the Hopkins agreement.
That commitment marked the first visible progress toward a hearing since activists began pressing for one last spring. Emil Volcheck, member of the Abell Improvement Association, called it “a major breakthrough,” though he cautioned that no hearing date has been set.
Volcheck and other residents are working with Community Law Center, which provides legal services for community organizations and neighborhoods advancing equity and justice, and argue that Baltimore, after regaining local control of BPD this year, now has the authority to withdraw from the 2022 MOU and halt JHUPD operations within the city.
“My clients strongly believe that the current city council has an obligation to review the existing MOU, with this new lens of local control, and evaluate whether the initial contract language still makes good sense for policing in Baltimore City,” said Amy L. Petkovsek, the center’s executive director.
Hopkins faculty have also continually advocated for greater accountability for JHUPD. During an April city council hearing, several professors testified that Hopkins’ private police force endangers academic freedom and campus protest rights. On Nov. 3, the Krieger School Faculty Senate, which represents over 800 faculty at its Homewood campus, passed a resolution urging for a City Council oversight hearing after passing a similar measure in 2024.
Hopkins maintains it does offer community oversight through its Police Accountability Board, which critics say does not function independently of university. But one of its members, Sonja Merchant Jones, recently became the first from that body to publicly support a City Council hearing.
As the Trump administration greatly expands federal powers and threatens to deploy federal troops to cities like Baltimore while intensifying efforts to suppress dissent on campuses nationwide, organizers feel accountability for one of the city’s most powerful institutions can’t be delayed.
“We can understand the Hopkins expansion of policing as part of a broader national trend,” Lewis said. “JHUPD is a local expression of the same push for more police and prisons — from local to federal — at a time when those policies are making people less safe, not more.”
He noted that other campus police departments across the country have entered formal agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a direction Baltimore organizers want to prevent.
“This is the first time our city officials actually have power over this private police force — it’s a pivotal inflection point,” Lewis said. “The only way to overcome the power of rich institutions or of unresponsive government is to organize.”
Residents near Hopkins’ Homewood campus say they’ve been concerned about the university’s patrols quietly expanding beyond approved boundaries.
“Officers are being sighted in places where we know they shouldn’t be,” said Joan Floyd, a longtime community advocate. “As far as I’m concerned, JHU is running a rogue police force in the city, and BPD and City Hall are unconcerned.”
For BAM, the issue is larger than Hopkins.
“When workers are organized, they can fight for what they need — and workers don’t want more police in their communities,” Lewis said. “Safety is not about more investment in police. Real safety comes from giving people what they need — paychecks that cover bills, food, water, healthcare.”
Lewis said BAM members have had “thousands of conversations across the city, at neighborhood meetings, farmers markets, food distributions, and mutual-aid fairs.” Many residents, he added, are surprised to learn that JHUPD’s jurisdiction is tied to Hopkins’ vast real-estate footprint, meaning its officers could patrol far beyond campus.
In a statement earlier this year, Branville G. Bard Jr., Hopkins’ vice president for public safety, said the department remains committed to being a “model, community-oriented, transparent, and constitutional public-safety organization.”
Organizers say they plan to deliver petition signatures to City Hall and outline next steps, including a proposed freeze on hiring new JHUPD officers until a public hearing is held.
BAM has already announced a citywide rally on December 15 outside City Hall, intended to escalate pressure on the Council if no hearing date has been set.
“Our first campaign right now demands the complete abolition of the JHPD, and to achieve that goal, our commitments are building community power and solidarity against the JHPD through education and organizing, to demand the immediate repeal of MOU that enables the JHPD,” Lewis said.