Found this gem of an article from The State Press:
Crime is down across ASU campus, police said after releasing crime statistics for 2012.
The report shows a 7.6 percent decrease in all crime on the Tempe campus, with individual decreases in alcohol-related, aggravated assault and arson arrests. (Yes, let’s skew the data by excluding the major crime spikes at the outlying campuses).
ASU Assistant Chief of Police Jim Hardina said the decrease in crime can be attributed to programs that focus on educating students.
“I think a lot of factors of it has to do with different strategies, enforcement, education and working with other departments on campus to educate students and reduce crime,” Hardina said. (Translation? Other departments do our work for us!)
ASU spokeswoman Julie Newberg said in an email that the University has implemented many programs to increase safety on campus.
“The safety of students, faculty, staff and visitors is the University’s top priority,” Newberg said. “ASU has extensive programs and services in place and is continuously monitoring and improving them.” (What programs would these be? The alcohol taskforce you initally refused to participate in?)
ASU saw a decrease in alcohol-related crime in 2012, with arrests decreasing by 22 percent and violations referred for action down by 12 percent across all campuses, according to the report. (Arrests down for alcohol? ASUPD has become reactionary in nature, due the critical shortage of staffing. Less officers to be proactive = less arrests. Alternatively, having other agencies take the arrest stats for you).
While many areas did see a decrease in crime, all campuses saw an increase in theft and burglary, the report shows.
Tempe saw 28 more burglaries in 2012, a 40 percent increase from the previous year, according to the report. (40% increase!!)
According to the report, the Downtown, West and Polytechnic campuses saw a 42, 33 and 70 percent increase in theft, respectively. (Up to a 70% increase!? Unacceptable!) This translates to a relatively small 4.5 percent increase across all campuses, because each campus, excluding Tempe, has fewer students and fewer number of incidents. (Fewer students at the outlying campuses, yes…but crime rates nearly tripling in some cases!)
Another area in which crime increased is in drug-related arrests with ASU Police arresting 296 students in 2012, according to the report. This shows a approximately 62 percent increase from the previous year, when only 183 students were arrested, according to the report. (62% increase!??! How is the PD doing its job here? Let’s not forget not too terribly long ago ASUPD stated to azfamily.com that ASU’s drug crimes had DECREASED. So now they’re changing their story? )
Stewart Adams, crime prevention specialist for ASU, said the Crime Prevention Unit is the “proactive” unit of ASU Police and works to prevent crime on campus by giving safety presentations and checking the campus for safety. (Handing out flyers and pencils isn’t being “proactive”; having adequate staffing to allow OFFICERS to be proactive is most effective). While Crime Prevention Unit is very active on campus, the unit’s efforts are hard to measure, because prevented crimes are not able to be measured, Adams said.
Since when did ASU’s spokesperson/media relations guru Julie Newberg decide to release a story on behalf of the PD? Oh yeah, when negative stories come out about ASU that need to have a “positive” spin on them. Nice try.
ASUPD has been looking at ways to dodge Clery for years. Statistical manipulation is the key component. I know they looked at reporting some stats as other stats for years, a sort of statistical laundering. Hardina was a known lobbyist for this. Command is so used to lying to the public, to their bosses, and to us that they even lie about completely obvious issues of no consequence.
The public should be outside 325 E Apache knocking on the door asking why the fuck our staffing has been so dangerously low for so long?!?
The public should be asking why no more than one officer is at the Polytech, West, and downtown campus every day, why one, two, sometimes three officers are protecting the entire Tempe campus on a regular basis?!?
The police aides are great, but they aren’t cops, they don’t have the training, tools, or firearms to provide adequate backup. Command can’t figure out the problem, Morgan O can’t figure out the problem, so it’s up to the public to figure it out before one of us or the public get seriously injured because the ASSupD/ASUPD isn’t prepared, hasn’t been prepared, and has no intention of fixing the problem so that it will be prepared in the future.
Again, you have a bunch of professional politicians putting bogus information out to make a perception go away. When a situation happens, gets out of control, and our department comes into question this whole blog would fit nicely into the legal binder for the coming lawsuits. Besides, the people responsible will never meet or see the families affected, they get to play fool’s fortune with tax payer millions. It’s not their family, their kids, their coworkers, why care right?
It’s strange how obsessed with bike thieves the department is. If the University was really concerned about it would they have so many unsecured bike racks tucked in so many places? Talk to someone from another department about bike thieves and you will get laughed into shame.
[…] to skew its crime statistics in October 2013, just after ASUPD released its 2012 crime statistics (here and […]
[…] the largest public university in the country with crime rates on the rise, only having 40 officers working in a patrol capacity is unacceptable! Promoting more and more […]