Crime alerts keep campuses cautious

A white piece of paper hangs in the window of the Lothrop Hall security booth. The paper… A white piece of paper hangs in the window of the Lothrop Hall security booth. The paper features a Pitt police insignia and warns students of an attempted robbery outside the Fifth Avenue entrance of Montefiore Hospital. The paper is a crime alert – one of many across Lothrop Hall and Victoria Building.

Dustin Collins, a Lothrop resident, looked up from his cigarette and shrugged his shoulders.

“A crime what?” said Collins. “I hadn’t heard anything about it.”

Pitt police post the alerts in compliance with the Jean Cleary Campus Disclosure Act. Among other stipulations, this 1990 law requires campus police to warn students of local crimes that pose an ongoing threat.

The alerts are posted on campus near the scene of the incident. While the alerts provide the required information, many students are not aware they exist.

This problem is not unique to Pitt.

After a string of rumors and conflicting stories related to an October assault in the Peace Garden on the Carnegie Mellon University campus, CMU police saw the need for better communication. On Jan. 9, CMU police Chief Creig Doyle implemented a new crime alert system. Under the new system, police send a campus-wide alert via e-mail in cases of violent crime on campus. In addition, CMU Police still wallpaper the campus by posting written alerts around the crime scene and on 42 designated billboards across campus.

“We have had consistent positive feedback,” said Doyle about the new system.

CMU student Mark Baldwin said he gets the e-mails about once a week. “They’re the same things you see on campus,” he said.

According to Pitt police Chief Tim Delaney, logistical problems prohibit Pitt from implementing a similar system.

“[CMU is] a lot smaller than us,” Delaney said. “I’m not sure Pitt has the ability to do [mass e-mails].”

Currently, in addition to the paper alerts, Pitt police provide crime information on its Web site at www.pitt.edu/~police.

“We’ve had 12,000 hits on our Web site, and over 50 hits on the crime alert link,” Delaney said. “Somebody’s looking.”