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.”

By Alex Luthi
ONLINE EDITOR

According to official Associated Students Ocean campus election results released Friday morning, Joshua Nielsen and Ryan Vanderpol were elected to the posts of student trustee and AS president, respectively.

The results were first released via text message by a member of City College’s AS to Rod Santos, acting dean of student affairs and public safety and Diana Munoz-Villanueva, the current student trustee for City College’s board of trustees.

Munoz-Villanueva announced the results of the race for student trustee during the Thursday meeting of City College’s board of trustees at the John Adams campus to the standing room only crowd attending the meeting.

The official results were released to The Guardman by City College student Jimmy Young, an AS senator candidate who ran on the O.S. slate. The results were verified by Pamela Ward, election commissioner, Philip Conklin, assistant elections commissioner and Skip Fotch, associate dean of student activities.

Election Results from Ocean Campus

Vote counts for a candidate appear after the candidate’s name.

Winners of each race are denoted in bold.

District-wide election results:

Proposition S

Proposition S Approved

Yes 467
No 207

Student Trustee Candidates Votes

Joshua Nielsen 846
Bivett Bracket 197
Aito Compton 157

Ocean campus vote tallies:

AS Ocean President

Ryan Vanderpol 277
Alecia Dominguez 265
Paolo Marquez 172
Olivia Franco 118
Jerry Scripter 54

AS Ocean Senators Votes

Nicole Blas 382
Yoowi Jang 281
Marielle Bautista 280
Pedro Alforque 357
Keyla Medonza 325
Laura Medina 311
Moose Adewunmi 308
Choco (Vinci-Paolo) Vilbar 274
Daniel Mancia 266
Eloy Najera 262
Diamond Dave Whitaker 262
Zenryo Trenholm 260
Mei Xuan 257
Rheana Rios 255
Faafetai Tupua 255
Wen S. Li 240
Johnny Lee 239
Raymond Tan 238
Jimmy Young 232
Ashley Brown 227
Christopher Gomora 223
Stephanie Nuttman 217
Joshua Bohar 192
Jacob Anderson 183
Barbara Jefferson 188
Vincent Finkowski 185
Josh Terry 160
William McSwine 152
Tayana Drevaleva 150
Micheál McLoughlin 150

Source: AS Elections

For updates on CIty College’s Associated Students election results, check back with The Guardsman or follow our election twitter feed @ccsfelection.

By Kristan Korns
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A rise in crime on and around the City College Ocean campus area, including recent sexual assaults and multiple armed robberies, has the local community on alert.

“Criminals find something that works and stick to it,” Officer Christian Smith of the City College Police Department said. “They are targeting areas around City College, San Francisco State and Balboa BART.”

Rod Santos, dean of public safety and acting police chief for City College, believes the rise in crime may be connected to the economic downturn in the surrounding community, with many people in San Francisco affected by the country’s rising unemployment rate.

“What happens here reflects what’s happening around us in the city. People are losing jobs,” Santos said. “Based on SFPD reports, [crimes] are happening on all sides of the campus. It’s worse at Ocean campus, just because of the sheer number of students here.”

Santos categorized most of the increased activity as “crimes of opportunity” and stressed the importance of educating students to protect themselves by being aware of their surroundings.

“You could make the assumption that it all happens at sundown but it’s also happening in the daylight,” he said.

Traveling in groups after dark, and taking precautions such as hiding the distinctive white iPod earbuds when traveling to and from Balboa BART, are good ways to reduce the chances of becoming a victim, Santos advised.

“Crime is everywhere in the city. [It] shows how big the school is, and we don’t have the type of security that other large schools, or even malls have,” said Sharlene Dillon, dance and communications major at City College.

“We have 100,000 students,” Santos said, “We’re like a small city. But here on a college campus we’re most definitely safer than out on the city streets.”

To add to the strength of the police department, three new officers were welcomed to City College Friday April 3, bringing the total to 28 officers for all City College campuses.

Officers Alfred Chang, Zaid Hadi, and Tiffany Green, took their oaths in front of the Science Building. All three of the new officers are joining the San Francisco City College Police Department from other Bay Area police departments.

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.

By Alex Weinschenker
STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The San Francisco Police Department has no plans to add Segways, the electric two-wheeled substitute to walking, to their arsenal of patrol vehicles.

“Because of the budget crisis, it is highly unlikely San Francisco [Police] will adopt Segways as a means of patrol without the help of a massive public donation,” Lynn Domioka, SFPD sergeant of public affairs said.

The price of a single Segway ranges from about $5,300 to $6,400, depending on the model.

Although San Francisco is currently unable to upgrade the typical foot patrolman, the San Jose Police Department has successfully been utilizing Segways to patrol the downtown area for roughly three years.

“The Segway has been effective in getting officers from place to place more rapidly in the downtown area,”  said Sergeant Fred Mills, head of the SJPD Public Affairs Department. Segways have not been put to use outside of downtown San Jose.

Locally, City College has implemented the use of Segways to patrol the parking lots of the Ocean campus as a substitute for patrol cars. “[The Segways] provide more mobility, giving patrolmen the ability to cover a greater area as well as offering an efficient green alternative to getting officers out of the patrol vehicle,” said Rod Santos, interim chief of the City College Police Department.

Despite the implementation of the Segway in parking lots, some students feel the device could contribute to a far greater good if utilized as a substitute for the current patrol car.

“It would be a great idea to increase the officer patrol presence on campus, bringing the police out of the cars to protect students in dangerous areas, not just patrolling the parking lots,” said Alex Hafner, a psychology major, adding Segways could help officers patrol the areas surrounding City College, improving security after the recent string of sexual assaults.

Currently, Segways are used only by non-sworn campus control guards, civilians with no arrest power, for purposes of traffic control.