The Mississippi State University Police Department seeks to make a change to a law that would extend its jurisdiction 500 feet around campus.
According to MSUPD police chief Marvin Rice, the police forces for all junior colleges, such as EMCC, currently have this special expansion to their jurisdictions as well as two other four-year universities. Rice said the intention is to alter the law so every institution formed under the Institute for Higher Learning will have this expansion.
Rice said MSUPD’s main reason for seeking the expansion is Blackjack Road. Blackjack lies outside of both Starkville Police and MSUPD’s jurisdiction, so it is left to the county sheriffs to patrol.
“We go out and sit a lot,” Oktibbeha Sheriff Steve Gladney said. “I’ll take deputies and sit them out there to be seen and hopefully slow some folks down, but we can’t run a radar. I’d love to be able to run a radar.”
Gladney said last year a bill was presented to state legislature that would allow for sheriffs in counties with a significant population to operate radar, but it failed.
“Right now Blackjack is kind of a no-mans land,” Rice said.
Rice also said the expansion would allow the police department to have better control of game-day traffic on Hwy 12 and 182 without feeling like they were stepping on SPD’s jurisdiction.
The change would not grant MSUPD full jurisdiction 500 feet past campus property; rather, it would only allow them to patrol for traffic violations. Anything involving criminal activity would still have to be handled by the respective departments that originally had jurisdiction. 
“If they run across a warrant or something like that while making a traffic stop, they could make the arrest, but if a serious crime happened in that area it would be out of their jurisdiction,” Rice said.
According to Rice, MSUPD can and will still respond to calls made in that area in cases where someone is in danger as it did when the shooting was reported on Blackjack Road Oct. 31. 
However, any further action would have to be handled by other departments.
“Because of our proximity and that it is usually our students involved, in those cases we respond to those calls,” Rice said. “There are times the county only has three or four officers for the entire county. They have to spread out and the nearest officer might be 30 minutes away,” he said.
The decision will have to be made by the state legislature in 2015, Rice said, and if it passes it will be up to the legislature when the change would take place. Currently, there is a representative lobbying for the expansion.
“I don’t think they’ll have an issue with it because so many schools already have it, and we aren’t just asking for Mississippi State,” Rice said. “We’re just asking to standardize the laws across all the (Institute of Higher Learning) schools.”
Blackjack Road has seen a large increase in daily use due to student apartments and MSU’s recent record-breaking athletic success. The condition of the road was also worsened significantly when construction of Aspen Heights saw the weight of heavy machinery warping the road on Mississippi’s soft soil.
“The sheriffs work a lot of accidents there currently,” Rice said. “I have heard that the Aspen/Pointe area accounts for a majority of the county’s calls.”
Gladney said it would be nice to be able to have police who are able to enforce the speed limit via radar on Blackjack Road.
The expansion would essentially be a quick fix, and according to Rice, the city of Starkville is looking to expand its limits past Aspen Heights. This would place Blackjack Road under SPD jurisdiction and allow for radar-enforced policing, but such an action would take several years to complete.
MSUPD’s potential expansion will not happen for a few months at the least, but Rice said he wants the word out.
“I think it is important for students to know that we are looking to expand so that they can give feedback,” Rice said. “I don’t like people to be uninformed.”