Public concern, complaints spurred new procedures The University Police department has come under considerable fire in the past few months over questions raised about its crime logging procedures. Crimes are noted in the department's incident journal, which contains information that is available to any member of the University community. The log is the primary source of crime information for The Daily Pennsylvanian. Discrepancies regarding logging procedures directly affect the community's perception of safety by curtailing the information at the public's disposal. Under the federal Student Right to Know Act and Pennsylvania Act 73, all university police departments are required to keep a journal listing all valid complaints and reports of crimes received by the department. The laws also mandate that this record be available to the public. William Krulac of the Pennsylvania Police Bureau of Research and Development said the department should log all crimes clearly in the book, including sex offenses. "The only thing that shouldn't go in there are the names of the victims [of personal issues like sex crimes]," he said. University Police administrators just recently decided to begin logging rapes and other sex offenses in the incident journal. The department had previously logged sex offenses, but had coded them so ambiguously -- to ensure the anonymity of the victims -- that it was unclear that they were sexual crimes. If these offenses are not in the incident journal, the public has no access to the information and may get a skewed view of crime levels. However, according to Weaver, the University goes one step farther and compiles a Community Crime Report that includes all crimes logged in the "inside jurisdiction" section of the incident journal. Due to public response following last weeks' DP article calling this procedure into question, Director of Police Operations Maureen Rush announced that sex offenses will now be coded accordingly. She added that the names of the victims and the exact location of sex crimes will still be omitted from journal entries to retain confidentiality. The logging of sex crimes has been a long-standing issue in the department, as student groups at one time requested complete anonymity when dealing with crimes of this nature. The Community Crime Report is distributed to keep students, faculty, staff and employees aware of the crime levels in the community immediately surrounding the campus. It is vitally important that the facts in the incident journal be accurate, since information is taken from there for these reports. "Most students aren't going to come in and see the log book, but they will read these reports or they will read the DP," said Joe Weaver, a University Police lieutenant. Until recently, the department made no distinction in the log book between crimes that occurred inside and outside University Police jurisdiction. But an internal memo written by Rush last month revealed that the department was planning to completely cease logging crimes which occurred outside of jurisdiction. University Police patrol an area extending from 30th Street to 43rd Street, and from Baltimore Avenue to Market Street -- which encompasses most, but not all University students' homes. Rush said in the memo that logging crimes outside of University Police jurisdiction would only serve to "raise the already high anxieties" of the University community. But although these crimes occur outside of police jurisdiction, they are still in areas near campus and include areas where many University students live. On February 15, Managing Director of Public Safety Thomas Seamon announced that the department would reassess the decision. The department then decided to continue logging crimes out of University Police jurisdiction, but to record those crimes in a separate section of the crime log. According to Weaver, the former system used by University Police did not make a distinction between actual crime levels on campus and community crime levels. "We made the change to keep the law straight and to make sure there was correlation between all pieces of crime information," he said. Under the new system, crimes which occur within University Police jurisdiction are categorized as either "on campus" or "off campus," according to Weaver. On-campus locations are defined as any building or area owned, operated or controlled by the University. The University Police department compiles the information into two reports, the Uniform Crime Report and the Community Crime Report. The UCR is a compilation of only those crimes which have the designation "on campus." These numbers are used to compare the safety value of campuses across the country. Rush said Wednesday that she feels University Police do a more than accurate job of reporting crimes.
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