TEMPE, AZ – Most public universities are required to follow the Clery Act — which states a university must post accurate crime statistics.
The federal law requires universities to ask neighboring police agencies for Clery crime statistics in three separate areas: on-campus, public property (as in streets, sidewalks and parking lots near campus) and non-campus areas.
Attorney Judd Nemiro says, “Non-campus places would be things that are owned and operated by ASU, but not specifically on campus, so things like student run organizations.”
Crimes handled by Arizona State University Police get reported immediately, but the ones that occur near campus don’t always get added because they fall into a grey area.
For example, back in 2010, ASU student Kyleigh Sousa was brutally killed directly across from campus.
The 21-year-old was robbed and then dragged behind a car. However, the robbery started in a private parking lot. Under the Clery Act, it doesn’t have to be included in ASU’s crime report.
ASU’s Annual Fire and Safety handbook says various police departments are “unable to provide a statistical breakdown appropriate for the Clery Act.”
ASU Official Julie Newberg says that clause doesn’t mean the police departments don’t provide the university with information.
“Letters are sent to each of the agencies every year and many of them do respond with the statistics that they can filter out,” said Newberg.
Newberg says it’s because how data is reported differs.
“Cities report data by FBI standards, which is not the same as universities that are asked to report crime data according to the Clery Act,” said Newberg. “Definitions of crimes also differ according to the difference in federal reporting law. That is why the statistical breakdown of city crime data is not appropriate for the Clery Act report.
Newberg says police departments do send them information and ASU filters out what statistics work under the Clery guidelines.
ASU says they provide a third party link to a website to get local statistics for “extra measure since the definitions of what each captures is different,” said Newberg.
Violating the Clery Act could result in losing some federal funding.
We’re happy the local media has decided to probe further into issues surrounding ASU’s Title IX and Clery Act reporting; hopefully this will be the first of many stories the local media does on these issues.
In the video on the abc15.com site, you can see excerpts from emails sent on behalf of Tempe Chief Ryff to ASU Chief Pickens, in which Ryff expressed concern over ASU stating they were not able to appropriately report some crime statistics. It is very concerning when another agency’s Chief has more regard for providing accurate crime statistics than our own Chief does.
Finally, Commander Hardina: you are very much aware of the department’s assertion that it was unable to provide a breakdown in crime statistic information; in addition to the fact that Pickens was discussing this issue with Chief Ryff, we have mentioned this assertion several times on The Integrity Report (and we know you are an avid reader, sir).
In the interiem, standby folks…this article could be the start of something bigger
The truth is getting out, the blood is in the water. No comment from the university and no comment from anyone at ASUPD as usual. Lying, deception is wrong, why is that hard to understand? We need to play by the rules that everyone else plays by.
Not even bothering to collect crime statistics from any other police departments and lying to the federal government for years is fraudulent. People go to jail for less.
Oh that’s funny, no comment from ASU. I wonder why nobody wants to talk about it? Why is that?
So when is the federal investigation at ASU on this going to kick off?
After the careful application of a little heat the worms keep coming out of the wood. Look at this:
http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/story/25418938/2014/05/03/student-launched-petition-targets-alleged-sexual-abuse-at-barrett-honors-college
Maybe it’s time for people to start doing their damn jobs, putting the safety of the kids first.
Hopefully the citizens of Arizona, the students and their families, will become more informed about how the ASU Police department has been mismanaged. Local news reports like this will start the process of uncovering many more serious issues concerning the safety of students, staff, the public.
When a police officer lies they usually get fired, when the leadership of the ASU police department have lied to their superiors, to the Federal government, to the public for years, they get pay raises.
If the local media does enough probing into ASUPD mismanagement they will ultimately be responsible for saving lives because that’s how serious these issues are.
The city police departments have the data, but ASUPD is looking to publish low crime stats at any cost. To avoid the negative stats our ethical command decided to not do the work in converting the stats from the FBI format into the federal Clery format.
Liars, Liars, Liars. You should have your AZPOST Certifications revoked! You knowingly reported false information to the federal government for years by lying by omission. Say it isn’t true.
Even Tempe’s police chief knows your jobs better than you and tried to point it out to our dead weight figurehead out to lunch petty vindictive chief. Response? Send out my 2 pint winged monkey to say some ambiguous statement that tries to diffuse the situation and doesn’t answer the question.
“ASU Assistant Police Chief James Hardina said police departments do supply the necessary data.”
We know they do, but ASUPD has chosen to either not ask most departments for it or in the case with Tempe PD, not enter the crimes in Clery format, just sit on it hoping nobody will notice. Well guess what, they noticed dummies, this goes back for years and years, and the feds should make examples of you guys for flagrantly violating federal law thinking you would get away with it.
ASUPD doesn’t just report crimes to clery. We have to report our clery stats and UCR (FBI) stats which sometimes classifies the same offense differently. If we were given information it wouldn’t be a problem to convert the crime classification because we do it every day. Besides that other departments could have crime analysts pull statistics from the areas around the campuses. There is no reason to not report statistics from other departments outside of intentional malfeasance
You’re exactly right. The information CAN be analyzed, but it requires ASUPD to go through the raw data (aka the police reports) and actually classify the crimes themselves according to the Clery guidelines.
But what ASUPD is doing is requesting the same data that Tempe PD reports to the FBI…the UCR data. Yes, we know TPD’s UCR data isn’t able to be reclassified you idiots; thats why you look at the ORIGINAL REPORTS. Every other university PD can get it right but ours!
Pickens and his command have intentionally deceived the public, students and their families about the safety of ASU. Year after year they refused to comply with the federal laws on this issue and lied, reporting artificially low numbers hoping nobody would notice.
What’s so hard about doing what so many other universities do and report the crime stats accurately? That’s a good question. Ask Michael Crow and Morgan Olsen, ASU Police chief John Pickens what their motivation is. We would all like to know.
Captain John Pickens is fast asleep at the wheel in iceberg waters. What good are laws, rules, guidelines if they are not enforced. That’s what they’re counting on year after year.