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.”

Graph detailing City College's recent Clery Act compliance. INFOGRAPHIC BY ALEX LUTHI / THE GUARDSMAN

By Fleur Bailey and Alex Luthi
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR AND ONLINE EDITOR

In response to an article in the March 11 issue of The Guardsman, City College has begun efforts to comply with a federal law mandating regular reporting of crimes on campus, according to college officials.

Peter Goldstein, vice chancellor of finance and administration, said the college is now in the process of recruiting three college employees to help keep the police department’s crime log up-to-date, a requirement of the Jeanne Clery Act, enforced by the Department of Education.

“We are getting three people trained so we feel assured we are complying with the act,” Goldstein said. “They will be working within the office [of the department of Public Safety]. As I said before, the law is the law and we have to comply.”

Rod Santos, acting dean of student affairs and public safety, confirmed that additional people will be working in the department to tackle the required reporting. “It’s very clear to me that we can’t have just one person doing [updating] this,” Santos said.

A crime log should be updated every two business days to comply with the act, officially called the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, which requires colleges receiving federal funds to report crimes that happen on or near their campuses. The most recent entry to the San Francisco Community College District Police Department’s crime log is dated Feb. 12 2009.

Officer Christian Smith of the SFCCDPD is the only person currently updating the crime log on the department’s Web site. Smith said a lack of time is the reason for infrequent entries to the crime log. Santos plans to put Smith in charge of training the additional staff members to keep the log up-to-date.

“The current crime log has really been misnamed,” Smith said. “It’s more like a summary of reports. The new log won’t be as detailed, but it will comply with the act.”

The act is named after Jeanne Clery, a freshman at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Penn. who was raped and murdered in her dorm room in 1986. It was established to inform students and the public about campus crime, so that students could protect themselves while on campus.

S. Daniel Carter is the director of public policy for Security On Campus, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to safety on campuses for college and university students. Carter said the organization is constantly working to ensure all federally-funded institutions across the U.S. are able to gain access to training for Clery Act compliance.

“We make the training for everyone — officers, non-police employees, security, civilians — so that more people will take it,” Carter said. “I can understand that an officer wants to be out in the field, I appreciate he may feel he’s being pulled in all different directions. But if the community is informed, they can be his power. The purpose of the Clery Act is to involve the whole community.”

San Francisco State University Police Department’s Web site is updated every night using a records management system implemented about a year and a half ago according to records supervisor Julie Shearer.

“The Department of Education Web site was not very helpful but I found a link to the Clery Act Web site, securityoncampus.org, and attended one of their training sessions in San Diego,” Shearer said.

In addition to keeping a daily crime log, the Clery Act requires colleges to collect and produce yearly statistics on different crimes occurring on and near campus, as well as producing crime alerts regarding ongoing threats to the college community.

“All I need is to get a few people trained and we can do it,” Santos said.

Editor’s note: The graphic used for the Clery Act story in the March 11 issue of The Guardsman may have confused readers by not clearly displaying the gathered data. An updated graphic is available at http://theguardsman.com/cleryact.

By Fleur Bailey and Alex Luthi
STAFF WRITER AND ONLINE EDITOR

In the face of increasing concerns for public safety, a review of City College records by The Guardsman has revealed the college appears to be failing to comply with the Jeanne Clery Act, a federal law regulating the reporting of crime on college campuses.

While the college appears to be complying with portions of the law, the requirement of any college or university that employs a campus police department or security force to publish a regularly updated crime log has not been followed by City College.

According to the Clery Act, formerly the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990, the college’s requirements can be simplified into three parts: A requirement to produce yearly statistics of crime of a certain nature on campus, a requirement to issue timely warnings regarding ongoing threats to the campus, and a daily crime log no more than two business days out of date.

Graph detailing City College's recent Clery Act compliance. INFOGRAPHIC BY ALEX LUTHI / THE GUARDSMAN

City College does not currently have a full-time chief of police, but Rod Santos, dean of public safety for City College has undertaken some of the responsibilities until a suitable replacement is found. Santos said although he was familiar with the Clery Act, he was unaware that City College was not fully complying with all requirements.

“It’s news to me that we might not be following the Clery Act,” he said. “I didn’t know that there was a 48 hour turnaround time [for crime log updates]. My definition of it is broad; I thought it was just about reporting campus crime.”

Although the San Francisco Community College District Police Department Web site does contain recent crime alerts and annual crime statistics, the last entry to the police log is a report of a stolen backpack that was recovered by the SFCCDPD on Feb. 12. As of press time, the college’s crime log would have to be up-to-date for all reported crimes as of March 6 to comply with the Clery Act.

“I think it is important for students to know what’s happening,” said Yuji Matsumoto, 23, a Japanese and English major and a docent of the Diego Rivera Mural at City College. “It’s in their job description to update their crime log. Accountability is the bottom line and I think it’s irresponsible if they’re not doing it.”

Currently, only one SFCCDPD officer undertakes the task of updating the campus’ crime log. Officer Christian Smith, who compiles the annual statistics for the college, says he uses any time he has outside of his regular duties to update the log. Smith is one of the two peace officers currently stationed at Ocean campus.

“There is no cover up, it’s not a conspiracy [why the log isn’t updated regularly], it’s just a lack of time,” he said. “We are understaffed. There are only two officers on Ocean campus right now, so we can’t be as proactive. I probably could make time, but it doesn’t feel right. I’d rather be out doing my job.”

“We have to be very careful how we handle things,” Smith said. “We’re careful how we release information without endangering the victim or making an already traumatized person more traumatized. We are very careful about victims’ rights, especially sexual battery or very sensitive cases.”

If a college is not complying fully with the Clery Act, a complaint can be filed with the U.S. Department of Education, which is in charge of enforcing Clery Act compliance.

If an ensuing investigation finds a college in violation of the Clery Act, the college can be fined a maximum $27,500 per violation. The total amount of fines can vary, depending on the gravity of the violation and the size of the institution. If the violations are severe enough, the college can lose all of its federal funding, including federal financial aid.

Eastern Michigan University is the most recent of four U.S. colleges to be fined for violating the Clery Act. The University received a $350,000 fine in June 2008 after an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education uncovered that EMU had concealed the cause of death of one of its students in 2006.

Media reports stated that the student, Laura Dickinson, was raped and murdered in her dorm room. The university withheld information for 10 weeks after Dickinson’s death before announcing to her parents and the college’s community that her death was actually a homicide.

The Jeanne Clery Act, named after the daughter of Howard and Connie Clery, a freshman at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Penn. who was raped and murdered in her dorm room in 1986. After her death, Clery’s parents discovered Lehigh students had not been informed about 38 previous violent crimes that had occurred on campus during the three years prior to their daughter’s death.

The Clerys then pushed to have a law created to inform students and the public about crime on college campuses, in the hope that publishing information on campus crime would help students make more informed choices about their safety.

The act was revised in 1998 to include the requirement of updating the crime logs within two days of the last reported incident. While the annual statistics need only cover crimes of a certain severity, a college’s crime log must include all incidents reported to the security force or police department for the college. The log must be made available to any member of the public for inspection.

“I generally feel safe on campus,” said Akira Wong, a 27-year-old English major. “I see the crime alerts posted around campus and I’m curious so I always read them. I don’t go looking for the information, but it’s surprising that there have been so many unreported crimes.”

City College’s police department also falls under the jurisdiction of Peter Goldstein, vice chancellor of finance and administration. Goldstein said that he will work with Santos to keep the crime log up-to-date, and that Santos will ensure a second person is trained to update the log so the college will no longer rely on a single individual.

“The law is the law and we have to comply,” Goldstein said.

This is the first installment of a series highlighting public safety on community college campuses in The Guardsman. The next installment in the series will be in the March 25 issue of The Guardsman.