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St. Cloud State University
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Campus theft hits new high
By Joe Palmersheim
Published:
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Crime occurs on the SCSU campus just like any other university, but is the campus as safe a place as we would like to think?
"The most predominant crime on this campus is usually theft or larceny, and the reason for that is that theft or larceny is pretty much a crime of opportunity. It's very rare that colleges or universities in this country have a major crime, such as homicide or a major assault or things like that," said Miles Heckendorn III, SCSU director of public safety.
"The concept of the olden days of being a 'city within a city' and being immune from things, such as 'the old castle with a moat around it' concept, or colleges or universities being hallowed ground - those days have kind of gone by the wayside," Heckendorn said.
He went on to add that being open to the public, while increasing this risk of security breach, is worth it because the community needs to be involved with the university.
This year, even with the cold weather and the heavy snowfall, crime statistics remained pretty much the same.
"We're in a situation where 'crimes against person,' such as assaults, are pretty low. They are fairly low and they are fairly constant - they don't show any increase or decrease. They continue to be a fairly constant situation as far as numbers go," Heckendorn said.
"What we have seen this year, for the past calendar year 2002, which is the most recent data we've been able to put out, is that property crimes have increased slightly over the past couple of years, at least at our university," Heckendorn said.
However, while assaults are down, on-campus theft is going up.
There were 151 reported incidences of theft last year, and that pattern shows no signs of change. In 2000, there were only 95 incidents involving theft on campus. That means, in the past four years, the rate of theft on campus has increased by 50 percent.
Also, drugs and college campuses have always been a bad mix, Heckendorn said.
Whenever there are drug problems on campus, local law enforcement is called in to deal with the problem. Heckendorn explained that this is because Public Safety doesn't have the legal authority to deal with drugs, unlike the autonomous security forces at the University of Minnesota system, who are, in effect, a small police force.
Another concern Heckendorn has that may lead to crime is binge drinking.
"Drinking to excess, drinking a lot in a very short period of time - it concerns me from a health and safety and welfare standpoint. I'm not advocating total non-drinking, non-consumption of alcohol in any way, shape or form. I'm simply concerned about persons who drink to the point of becoming incapacitated and not in control of their faculties for a period of time where it does pose a possible risk to their health," Heckendorn said.
He said there are several groups on campus that are working to stop this problem.
All schools in the country are required to post information on crime on a Department of Education Web site, and SCSU is no exception to that rule. The information, which can be found at
http://www.ope.ed.gov/security
, offers information.
For the past few years, assaults have been at a minimum, there haven't been any murders on campus and in the past three years there was one weapons violation.
However, arrests for drug and alcohol violations are up from 39 to 43 a year, and there is an average of five forced sex offenses that occur on campus every year.
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