Ohio University students only received one campus crime alert email from the Ohio University Police Department this past semester, an unusually low number.
Although the amount of alert emails was down for Fall Semester, the number of alerts sent during the calendar year was on par with numbers in years past. In total, six alerts were sent by OUPD in 2012, nine alerts in 2011 and 2010, six alerts in 2009 and only three in 2008, according to the OUPD website.
OU Chief of Police Andrew Powers said that crime on OU’s campus goes through cycles.
“It just so happens that this particular semester, we don’t appear to have had as many incidents,” said Powers.
OUPD has strict guidelines on what incidents require email alerts, based on the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, he said.
Students must be notified of crimes that fall under one of seven categories and also present an ongoing threat to the campus community. The seven categories include criminal homicide, sex offenses, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft and arson, according to the Clery Center for Security on Campus website.
“We look at where it occurred in proximity to the campus or student dwellings, we look at whether we have a suspect — we look at a variety of factors,” Powers said. “Based on the totality of the circumstances, we make a decision about whether or not to issue a timely notification or crime alert.”
The drop in alert emails this semester is not due to a change in what warrants an alert email, but rather a lack of incidents, Powers said.
Because a semester is a short amount of time, Powers isn’t sure if the lack of crimes Fall Semester warranting an alert means anything at all.
“It’s not so few that I would say something has markedly changed in our community and we now don’t have as much crime as we use to,” he said. “I would like to say that, I would like to believe that, but I think that would give people a false sense of security.”
