The clause conferring rights and privileges, MGL-23C Section 63, states that "Special state police officers....shall have the same power to make arrests as regular police officers for any criminal offense committed in or upon lands or structures owned, used or occupied by such college, university, or other institution."

While the powers given to campus police officers by state law are broad, it dictates severely constrained jurisdiction for officers off-campus.

According to this law, HUPD officers have the full power of state police officers, but only while on property owned by the University that employs them.

But Harvard's property is non-contiguous. The University owns a big patch of property on the Boston side of the Charles River, sizable acreage in Cambridge and buildings scattered across two counties. Its Medical School is in the Longwood area of Boston, and it owns acres of land in Southborough and Hamilton.

Without any additional powers, an HUPD officer crossing the street from Harvard Yard to the Holyoke Center would have no more legal authority to stop a crime in progress (and make the accompanying arrest) than an ordinary citizen.

"[Harvard's properties] are not joined to one another, so an officer traveling from the Kennedy School to Harvard Yard is a person dressed like a police officer, yet has no authority in the absence of a deputy sheriff appointment," says Frank M. Burns, the number two sheriff in Middlesex County.

So in the early 1970s, the University decided to see whether Middlesex and Suffolk counties would agree to deputize its campus police officers.

The three reached agreements that gave HUPD officers broad powers of arrest in the greater Boston area (see map).