A Kent State University student said she was detained unlawfully by campus police for talking about carrying a concealed weapon (CCW).
Leandra Westbrook, a junior at KSU in Ohio, said that on April 27, she was on the phone with a friend and said: “It is a shame that I cannot carry a gun on campus, considering I have my carry license,” according to Campus Reform.
“In the conversation I had, there was no way to misinterpret what I said, or to even suggest that I had a gun with me,” Westbrook said.
Leandra Westbrook, a junior at Kent State University, was detained by campus police after students overheard her say “how it is a shame that I cannot carry a gun on campus, considering I have my carry license” on the phone. https://t.co/vXuM0CwiRL #news
— Campus Reform (@campusreform) May 9, 2018
When student cadet officers overheard the exchange between Westbrook and her friend, they immediately informed campus police, the police report stated.
Westbrook, who was in the lecture hall getting ready to take an anatomy quiz, was “removed from class and searched,” by the police in front of 200 other students, both Westbrook and the police report stated.
Westbrook, who is pro-Second Amendment, said she has been threatened and harassed before by other students for her conservative views and believes this may have been the case again with the student cadet who reported her.
Westbrook says her conservative beliefs are well-known on campus, as she is the former Vice President of her campus’s Turning Point USA chapter and a board member of the school’s Students for Life chapter.
Westbrook spoke with the school’s Dean of Students about the issue and was told there was nothing that could be done.
Westbrook said she has no other choice but to handle the situation herself.
She said: “I’ll be reporting the people who harassed me to the police, as well as the student cadets who reported me for having a gun for falsifying a report, as they said that they heard me say I had a gun and was afraid to get caught with it, which is not true.”
“My main concern is that people are not being held accountable for their actions,” she explained. “Their words don’t bother me, but if I was to say something like that to them, my guess is it wouldn’t be tolerated by the university.”
She also plans to start a concealed carry club at the college.
“My hopes are to teach people about gun safety and the gun control laws we already have in place, because a lot of people who speak on the subject are very uneducated [about gun laws],” she said.
After numerous requests for comment by Campus Reform, KSU did not respond.
