The SMU campus was a safer place in the past year as robberies dropped 70 percent in 2007 coupled with a 25 percent decrease in burglaries reported as well as an 80 percent drop in arson cases contributed to less campus crime, according to crime statistics released by the SMU police department on Monday.
The crime report was released in accordance with the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act. The report includes campus security policies, as well as statistics for the past three years about incidents occurring on or near campus.
The report showed a drop in robberies on campus from a reported 10 in 2006 to three in 2007. Robbery, as defined by the report, is the taking of anything of value from the custody of someone else by force. This is compared to burglary, which is the unlawful entry of a structure, and theft of items, which saw a drop from 40 reported cases in 2006 to 30 in 2007.
SMU Police Chief Richard Shafer attributes the drops to the ability of police officers to do their job more efficiently.
“Last year we took away the responsibilities of parking enforcement from the SMU police officers and with that the police were able to do more policing,” Shafer said. “The fact that police officers were more concentrated on preventing crimes and don’t have to fool around with writing parking tickets, I believe has had an impact.”
Motor vehicle thefts have also seen a reduction in the last year, dropping 13 percent. Shafer said many of these reported incidents involved SMU golf carts and people taking them for joy rides rather than actual student and faculty vehicle thefts. He said that we are quite lucky with Dallas having one of the highest auto theft rates in the nation, that the campus is able to experience such a low theft rate.
Shafer is glad to see improvement from his police force in preventing crime on campus but feels that there is still room to make the campus safer.
“We always have room for improvement,” Shafer said. “Our goal would be for there to be no crime on campus at all and ensure everyone’s safety completely. We just have to keep doing the best job we can and hopefully get those [crime report] numbers even lower.
Shafer was pleased to see both burglary and robbery statistics fall, but stressed that for them to continue to go down the students must take an active roll in prevention by securing their belongings and locking their doors. The first step for police to prevent robberies and burglaries is for individuals to take care of their own belongings properly, Shafer said.
Another significant change seen in the report came with a 44 percent drop in liquor law violation arrests on campus, while judicial referrals for the alcohol violations remained flat.
Shafer said that all arrests are referrals as well but as to the drop in arrests, he attributed that to a change in policy of handling alcohol violations over the last year. He said that when he became chief of police at SMU about a year and a half ago. A policy was instituted where the consequence of the violation is solely in the hands of the officer handling the situation. Before his tenure the policy was an arrest after one drink regardless, now it is at the discretion of the officer.
Shafer is proud of the numbers and the direction they are heading and what it means for the safety of the campus, but wants students to report crimes and utilize the police force to help make the campus a safer place.
“We do want to encourage people to report crimes,” Shafer said. “It is the only way to make the campus a safer place, regardless of our stats we want to help where we can, and however we can.”
