By Alex Luthi
ONLINE EDITOR

In response to possible violations of a federal law requiring regular crime reporting, the San Francisco Community College District Police Department has created a crime log and is beginning to train officers to update the log, according to department personnel.

Rod Santos, acting dean of student affairs and public safety, said three officers and one sergeant are being trained to maintain and update the crime log, supplementing the single officer now tasked with the job. The log is posted on the SFCCDPD’s section of City College’s Web site.

The officers and sergeant will be part of a team Santos said will ensure the college is complying with the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, a portion of federal law requiring all educational institutions receiving federal funding to regularly publish information on campus crime.

The college’s revamped crime log, introduced in April, is currently maintained by SFCCDPD officer Christian Smith. The crime log format was changed specifically to comply with the Clery Act, which mandates the log must be updated within two business days of any crime reported to the SFCCDPD.

The crime log will contain a minimum of the date, type, location and current disposition of each incident reported to the SFCCDPD.

Alexandra Fieber, a 20-year-old interior design major at city college said she is very concerned about crimes on and around campus and hopes the college will put out more information about campus crime.

“I feel I can be better prepared for what could happen on campus if I know what to expect,” Fieber said.

In addition to the new crime log, Santos said SFCCDPD officers have mentioned other colleges and universities use specialized software to help streamline and simplify Clery Act compliance, as well as reduce the amount of time and paperwork officers must do during their shifts.

Santos said the current procedure to update the crime log is done manually by Smith. Any applicable incident reports must be complied by hand, and then entered one by one into the log, which Santos said can take up a considerable amount of an officer’s shift at the department.

If a request is made for crime log records not included in the crime log, which include incidents older than 60 days, an officer must again go through old reports and include each incident manually. To be in compliance with the Clery Act, a college must make any portion of the log older than 60 days available within two business days from date the request is made.

Due to these concerns, Santos said he has requested SFCCDPD officers Smith and Jose Fiscal to recommend a system the college could purchase. Once the officers pass their recommendation onto his office, Santos said the process to purchase the officer’s recommendation will begin “immediately.”

Fiscal said the department is looking into different options for automating the SFCCDPD’s records system, but no official recommendations have been made yet.

Currently, the SFCCDPD uses a report writing system that Fiscal said he created, utilizing a word processing template with form fills. The template allows officers to first type up a report and print it out for approval by a sergeant. Before this system was put in place in 2005, Fiscal said the department was handwriting each report on San Francisco Police Department report forms.

“[The system] works for now, but it’s a big Band-Aid for us being behind on technology,” Fiscal said. “The truth of the matter is we do need to be up-to-date with what other police agencies in the state are using.”

According to Smith, other police departments began making the move to using reporting writing software in the ’90s.

If purchased, Fiscal said “[the software] will be report writing software. It could basically be an all-in-one software, similar to what a larger agency would use.”

The software the department is considering could potentially come with the ability to publish incidents reports automatically, specifically to comply with the Clery Act. The same software could also display reported incidents on a map, allowing a viewer to see how crimes are related geographically.

The cost of the software is also a factor, according to Fiscal and Carlos Gaytan, a supervising sergeant at Ocean campus.

“Little by little we are making progress. It’s going to take a while and everything comes down to money,” Gaytan said.

Estimates for the cost of purchasing a entire system could vary widely, from $20-30 per month per officer using the system to a $50,000-$60,000 one-time fee to setup and configure the software for City College.

Regardless of which system is purchased, Santos said City College’s Information Technology department may assist with the installation and configuration of the new system.

“The new system could be installed as early as May, once things calm down after finals are over,” Santos said. “It’s not a matter of which software we end up using, it is critical that we comply with the Clery Act.”