The Powell Police Department will continue to defer to Northwest College personnel when it comes to underage drinking and other minor offenses committed on campus.

At its Dec. 18 meeting, the city council voted to renew a cooperative agreement between the department and college that’s intended “to meet the policing needs of the NWC community in a way that contributes to the overall good of the community.”

The five-page memorandum of understanding, which was only lightly modified from past versions, spells out the roles that police and Northwest College security and residence hall personnel should play on campus. For instance, it says NWC will handle parking issues, event security, civil standbys and minor traffic crashes, while police are the primary agency for crimes, requests for service, animal control and crashes that involve over $1,000 worth of damage or hit-and-runs.

The document also notes that “a student’s room within a residence hall is that student’s lawful residence and all protections apply under the State of Wyoming and United States Constitutions regarding search and seizure.”

Then Powell Police Chief Roy Eckerdt described the document as laying out “our expectations of them as to what they report to us [and] their expectations of our behaviors on campus.”

The agreement directs NWC to report all felonies and any crimes involving drugs, weapons, serious bodily injury or juveniles. However, it says NWC personnel have the discretion to internally handle “any misdemeanor crime, status offense, or incident that occurs on campus, has no second party victim and does not threaten public safety or disrupt public order.”

Powell police generally have a “zero tolerance” policy on underage drinking, but the agreement carves out an exception: If police discover underage drinking while responding to a medical emergency in NWC’s residence halls, they’ll generally leave the incident in the hands of college personnel.

Eckerdt said the policy was created years ago, after a student suffered alcohol poisoning and no one called for help because they feared responding police would issue tickets. The chief added that the department could make an exception and intervene under unusual circumstances, such as if it was, say, a student’s third or subsequent offense.

The memo also contains specific expectations for reporting sex crimes involving adults. While the college will encourage all victims to make a police report, NWC security “will not make the report without [the victim’s] consent,” the document says. If an adult does decline to contact law enforcement, it says NWC personnel should carefully evaluate whether there is still a “need to report the circumstances of the offense to the police for the protection of the general public and campus population.”

The Powell Police Department used to share an officer with the college, but NWC changed that arrangement over a decade ago and now employs its own security personnel. The memo notes that there’s been “a long history of cooperation and collaboration” between the two entities.