The midshipman thought he was defending himself from a gunman stalking his dorm at the Naval Academy.
The Navy Police officer was searching for that same threat, going room to room, prepared to use force.
They collided at the mid’s door inside Bancroft Hall on Sept. 11, confused victims of a swatting attack one day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination in Utah.
The officer shot the midshipman in the shoulder, but not before getting bashed in the head with the butt of a dummy rifle used in parades.
The scare, heightened by the tensions that followed Kirk’s death, was the worst interaction ever between the academy police force and the 4,000 midshipmen it’s assigned to protect.
“We don’t have any authority for the security forces,” Lt. Gen. Michael Borgschulte, academy superintendent, said during remarks on the shooting before the academy’s Board of Visitors last month. “We don’t train them.”
Weeks after the superintendent’s update, though, a nine-page directive went out changing the rules of engagement for Naval Security Forces in Annapolis.
Capt. LaDonna Simpson, commander of the Navy support base across the Severn River from the academy, outlined everything from when police can stop men and women in uniform to how long they must wait for a chief petty officer to retrieve a midshipman in custody.
It laid out the precise circumstances when it is appropriate to stop mids and search, handcuff and fingerprint them — and when to let them go.
“These policy enhancements empower our highly trained police and security forces to carry out their critical law enforcement and protective duties more effectively,” Navy spokesman Edward Zeigler said Thursday.
Described as a “back-to-basics” adjustment, the Dec. 23 memo addresses long-simmering tensions over the role of the police force. The shooting scare heightened those concerns.
Simpson ordered officers to focus on protecting against terrorist threats, follow the prescribed actions for the listed circumstances and then use their best judgment.
“For situations not specifically outlined in this instruction; NSF must use their professional experience and training coupled with discretion to navigate the situation as a reasonable and prudent person would,” she wrote.
The police unit is a mix of about 45 men and women commanded by Chief Brian Beard. The department recently replaced its top security officer.
Some officers are enlisted sailors who carry the master-at-arms rating. It’s the Navy equivalent of the Military Police, or MPs, and requires specialized training.
They work alongside armed, uniformed civilians trained at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers and are certified as police officers by the Department of Defense.
Members of the force who spoke with me described the new directive as pressuring them to go easier on enforcement within the academy’s 388-acre campus than local police would outside the walls. It discourages actively investigating suspected crimes, they said.
Others say the officers are too quick to take an aggressive, uncompromising attitude.
The differing views have fostered conflict between officers and the mids, alumni, and Navy and Marine Corps officers at the academy.
It’s the kind of tension between security and law enforcement familiar to any college with its own police. The nature of the academy adds a significant complication.
Alumni, for example, have complained about overzealous traffic enforcement outside the Fluegel Alumni Center and the Naval Academy Golf Course.
Several retired officers, including a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went to the superintendent in 2024 after police stopped an alum on Greenbury Point Road outside the golf course on suspicion of drunken driving.
A Breathalyzer test by Anne Arundel County Police exonerated the man, but not before his car was towed and he was handcuffed and searched in public. The new policy bars similar stops.
“The change is a specific directive from the commanding officer to focus resources on-base by prohibiting units from staging for traffic enforcement on roads outside the fenceline,” Zeigler said.
Navy Police also respond to serious criminal offenses such as sexual assault. Yet some officers who spoke with me say they are discouraged from pursuing investigations.
They often deal with drug and alcohol use, particularly underage drinking and public intoxication — despite the uniforms, mids are young people still figuring out personal limits.
In 2022, though, officers handcuffed a member of the football team under suspicion of riding a scooter on The Yard while intoxicated.
“The instruction advises against using handcuffs for minor offenses where the individual is cooperative, emphasizing de-escalation,” Zeigler said
Arrests aren’t usually dealt with in a trial, as with civilian law enforcement. Instead, they go through the academy’s system of dealing with both military justice offenses and academy rule violations governed by the Code of Conduct.
Officers have little jurisdiction outside the walls, but until now have extended their patrols. Sometimes, such as when an academy officer stopped to help a group of Black bicyclists targeted by a passing motorist in 2024, it has caused confusion.
Kortland Jackson, an Annapolis Police spokesman, said his agency has little to do with the academy police. City officers who arrest or detain mids on the streets of Annapolis usually turn them over to Navy officials.
After the Bancroft Hall shooting in September, federal authorities charged a former midshipman living in Indiana with causing the scare.
Borgschulte, in comments recorded by my colleague Ellie Wolfe, told the Board of Visitors that the incident spurred an investigation of the response as well as the scare.
In the months since the shooting, he said, the academy and Simpson’s command have run 12 tabletop exercises — each a discussion of simulated scenarios and responses.
The academy has begun adding a network of cameras in public areas of Bancroft Hall’s 1.5 million square feet, and is developing an “opt-in” alert network like the one it uses to spread the word about flooding.
“There’s things we need to do immediately to be better, and then also do better with communication,” the Marine general said.
How the Naval Security Forces fit into that remains a work in progress.
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