Officials Discuss Trend of Campus Crime Incidents
By Nathan Shapiro In order to address several violent incidents that have occurred on campus recently, school officials held a press conference with student media on Oct. 31. Those present were University Police Assistant Chief Douglas Little, Deputy Chief Suzanne Benedetto and Pat Calabria, the university media relations officer. The assistant chief addressed three separate events that took place over the course of two weeks. An alleged armed robbery, the most recent incident, occurred on Oct. 30. According to Little, an undergraduate was approached in Roth Quad by two male suspects, one black and one white. They asked the victim for a cigarette, when he went to respond they forcibly asked him for his property and began to hit and kick him. The white male brandished a knife, which was not used in the incident. The first of the other two incidents involved a female graduate student who was accosted by a male suspect while jogging by the north entrance. He fled the scene when the girl fought him off. The police were able to retrieve DNA evidence from her fingernails when she scratched the suspect while pushing him away. “The next thing she did was the most appropriate thing, which was to contact the police,” Little said. “She could have went home, she could have washed her hands, but she didn’t.” A female student in Roosevelt Quad was involved in the second incident. After returning to her room on Oct. 22, she discovered the door was unlocked, inside a male suspect inappropriately touched her and fled the scene, according to police. Little emphasized that this was not a sexual assault, but it is a case of sexual abuse. A question of a fourth incident was raised, allegedly involving a female found unconscious in the bathroom in a residence hall. She is currently recovering in the university hospital. “That is a different situation,” Little responded. The police are investigating, he said, but declined to comment in depth, citing a request for privacy from the family. “We do not have any reason to think that these are all related,” Little said. The police force is working to solve each of the incidences, and have increased patrols on campus, he said. “In my thirty years we’ve had these types of situations, but it’s not a day-to-day business, it doesn’t happen like that, so I’m taken aback by it,” Little said in response to the frequency of events. He wants to get “back on track” ensuring campus safety and making people feel secure, and then catch the suspects involved. “For us, the safety of our students and staff is the priority,” Calabria said, “It’s not a process that has an end, we’re constantly striving to get better.” Most crimes on campus are crimes of opportunity, and simple things such as not propping doors, locking rooms and walking in twos or more deters such criminal acts, Little said. “Students, faculty and staff have to have an awareness of their surroundings.” Little also urged members of the campus community to report anything that seems suspicious, “We don’t ask you to get involved except that you observe it, see if you can get a description and contact us and let us do our job.” “As far as I’m concerned, in each of these incidences, we have a bad guy and we want to catch them,” Little said. |
