U. police fail to log all crime in jurisdiction

Crimes can go unlogged if Penn Police Officers do not handle them. About a month ago, a West Philadelphia woman was raped on the 4000 block of Chestnut Street. On January 26, a local teenager was driving his father's Pontiac Firebird at about 9 p.m. when two revolver-wielding men carjacked him on the 4000 block of Walnut Street. And within a month's time last summer, two rapes were reported to Philadelphia Police as occurring on the 4000 block of Spruce Street. Each of these incidents happened within University Police jurisdiction, which extends from the Schuylkill River to 43rd Street between Baltimore Avenue and Market Street. But because University Police officers did not respond to them, they were never noted in the University Police crime log book, and they never entered the pages of The Daily Pennsylvanian -- whose primary source of information is that log book. In 1997, about 37 robberies, 17 aggravated assaults, five rapes and one carjacking that occurred within University Police jurisdiction were never investigated or filed as incidents by the University Police. Penn officials give two reasons for the crimes' absences from University records: the victims were not affiliated with the University, and the crimes were not reported to Penn Police. These crimes -- as reported to the Philadelphia Police Department's 18th District -- got a bare-bones, one-line summary in Almanac, Penn's weekly publication of record, giving the date, time, location and a one- or two-word description of the incident. In not recording these incidents, the University is not skirting or breaking any laws, particularly because none of the crimes would be considered "on-campus" under federal and state guidelines. And even if the crimes were recorded in the log book, they would not affect the crime statistics Penn must submit to the federal government annually, as the incidents all occurred off campus. But by not recording the incidents, Penn Division of Public Safety officials concede that they are not tracking crime trends as accurately as possible. And without more detailed information about each crime in The Daily Pennsylvanian, many students are oblivious to crimes that have happened near their doorsteps. In a recent interview, Managing Director of Public Safety Tom Seamon said the department plans to take steps to make sure it gets a more complete picture of crime within University Police jurisdiction. Just because the victims aren't affiliated with Penn doesn't mean the crimes are insignificant, he said. "If someone commits a crime [within University Police jurisdiction, and the victim is someone not affiliated with the University], the next time it may be a [University] affiliate," said Seamon, who was a deputy Philadelphia Police commissioner before he came to Penn in 1995. Not everything goes unreported, though. In September, the DP reported a shooting that occurred on the 200 block of South 41st Street -- two weeks after it happened. University Police never logged the incident because it was handled by Philadelphia Police officers. None of the victims of these unlogged crimes were affiliated with the University. But most of the incidents occurred in areas where students, faculty and staff live, work, and walk on the street. In a month during which the U.S. Department of Education released its findings from a 3-month-long investigation of the University's crime statistics, Public Safety officials have put all aspects of crime reporting under the magnifying glass, Seamon said. "The DOE audit has made us look at everything that we're doing," Seamon said. He stressed that the failure to log all crimes within its jurisdiction is unrelated to the audit, which investigated the crime statistics the University reports to prospective students in accordance with federal law. In the future, the department plans to begin logging all crimes that occur within University Police jurisdiction, Seamon said. Logging a crime, however, requires that a University detective or police officer fill out an incident report. And if someone from University Police never responded to an incident, there would be problems filling out such a report. Detectives at the Philadelphia Police Department's Southwest Detectives Bureau said their policy is to inform University Police if they respond to a crime involving someone affiliated with Penn. Currently, a University detective retrieves weekly reports of major crimes from the 18th District headquarters, located at 55th and Pine streets, to keep on file for a month as a resource. But information contained within the usually-vague reports is not sufficient to write an incident report, Seamon said. So crimes, even after detectives are aware of them, usually remain out of the crime log book if University Police did not originally respond to them. Seamon said the department will "soon" begin assigning a detective to investigate each crime occurring within University Police jurisdiction -- whether or not the University Police originally responded to it.