The Department of Campus Safety (DCS) has released their March crime statistical report. This report shows the frequency of certain crimes that took place throughout the month of March 2015 and compares it to previous quarters and also entire years.
This year, there was a decline in both drug and liquor law violations. Drug abuse violations decreased by 66.7 percent and liquor law violations decreased by 30.8 percent. When looking at the quarterly statistics of Denver Health or Denver Cares transportation cases, there has been a 59 percent decrease.
“This past March was pretty mild given the large decrease in liquor and drug violations,” said Sergeant James Johnston, the Community Partnerships and Training Coordinator for the Department of Campus Safety. “Declines in those categories are possibly attributed to heavy enforcement activities last fall combined with continuous education and community outreach programming.”
There was a 200 percent increase in disorderly conduct cases, though. According to Johnston, this increase is attributed to liquor law violations that were classified as disorderly conduct upon further review.
Cases of assault have also increased since last year. “ These cases include threats which comprised many of the reported cases from this month,” said Johnston.
Bicycle thefts for the year to date have decreased by 57 percent.
“In March, there were seven bike thefts last year and zero this year,” said Johnston. “We like to think this is attributed to us continuing the exact same strategy we put in place last fall. It [The prevention strategy] now includes more active monitoring of the cameras at the bike racks, more active foot patrols, more community outreach related to using a u-lock, improved lighting in the case of Centennial Halls and added cameras at Centennial Towers.”
In an effort to keep bicycle thefts low, DCS has more plans to secure the bike racks. According to Johnston, DCS plans to install a higher fence around the bike racks, as well as the new C-Cure card access system. This will require students to have their Pioneer ID Card in order to gain access to the bike racks.
According to Johnston, academic buildings had a significantly higher than average number of reports in March. DCS has increased patrols through these buildings at all hours of the day and night.
Theft from buildings is also on the rise with a 260 percent increase year to date. The Ritchie Center has seen some of those theft cases.
“The majority of reports from the Ritchie Center are theft cases,” said Johnston. “Many of these stem from unsecured offices and unattended property. Our investigations unit has two suspects that they are looking into for these cases.”
Johnston has reminded staff in the Ritchie Center to secure their offices when not occupied.
According to Johnston, there was an increase in activity in the Greek Life houses. The activity consisted mainly of crimes committed against the greek houses, not by them.
Now that spring is here, DCS has also joined the rest of Denver by promoting the ‘Heads Up’ campaign in an effort to raise awareness about safely walking and bike riding around town.
“Students may have noticed an increase in Denver Police (DPD) in the area,” said Johnston. “That is through a new collaboration we have with DPD for increased traffic stops in the area because spring is when we anticipate having those high rates of auto vs pedestrian accidents. We want to highlight that those are almost always the fault of the pedestrian and never the driver.”
According to Johnston, “Last weekend, at our [DCS] request, DPD were out on University Boulevard and Evans Avenue near the bars citing people who were jaywalking.”
More information can be found in the monthly report, as well as the Campus Safety website.
