Public Safety looks forward to another successful year

As the school year begins to wrap up, public safety officials are looking back at the year that has gone by, as well as making plans for what lies ahead.

“The biggest thing I think that’s happened is that we were able to add some officers and that always helps,” Director of Public Safety Ken Vance said. “It’s good for the school. The more people we have out the better off we are.”

Vance said in terms of crime the biggest accomplishment of the year included solving cases involving employee thefts.

“That’s not a happy thing but the thing is that you caught them,” Vance said.

Deputy Director of Public Safety Richard Goodson said an important employee theft case that was solved involved a series of thefts from Paw Prints Bookstore that occurred in July and August.

Goodson said there were also minor office thefts that took place and were solved during the year.

He said another incident that was heavily investigated was a date rape; however, the victim ultimately decided not to place charges in the case.

Vance said that as the school year wraps up, Public Safety is now
working to plan for the fall semester. He said the department wants to concentrate on things such as crime prevention and self-defense classes.

Public Safety recently teamed up with University Housing to begin a new program called “GOTCHA,” which will work to raise student awareness about the consequences of letting strangers enter residence halls.

“The GOTCHA program is a great thing,” Vance said. “It’s just getting started, but I look for that to really take off in the fall with the new people that are here.”

The program works by having an undercover or plainclothes police officer try to gain entry to a residence hall by following someone through the door or by asking someone to let him in. If successful, the officer hands the person a GOTCHA card that states, “If I had been a criminal, you would now be a statistic.”

Other aspects of the program remind students to lock their doors and to not leave their belongings unattended.

“Crime equals motive plus opportunity,” Vance said. “It’s like a math equation, and if you can take away the opportunity then you can take away the motive.”

Vance said crime statistics for the year are below last year. He said violent crime is “really not much of anything.”

“That’s great,” he said. “It all comes back to the kids. For the most part, the kids have done a good job. Yes, we’ve had D.U.I.’s and alcohol violations and underage consumptions and those kinds of things and some crimes that go along with that like destruction of property and so forth, but in the big scheme of things it’s probably less this year than it’s been in a while.”

“It looks like we had less major incidences of crime, as well,” Goodson said.

Vance said crime statistics are a good bit down from where they were this time a year ago.

Sophomore history major Julia Camardo said she feels safe on campus.

“The lighting and emergency call boxes make me feel safer on campus,” Camardo said.

Sophomore computer science major Billy Phillips said the call boxes and bike officers make him feel safer.

Vance said a major goal for next year will be to increase crime prevention.

Goodson said as crime prevention becomes such a major priority, the department is now trying hard to get a Crime Prevention Coordinator.

“You always try to get better,” Vance said. “A perfect year is when nothing happens and you’ll never get that, but you’ve always got to try to be perfect.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 25 2003. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry