October is 'National Crime Prevention Month,' which means University police officers are preparing for an extra push in addition to their standard lineup of services.
Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) officers will begin the month by appearing at Medford Community Day on Sunday, Oct. 2. They will also distribute information in the Mayer Campus Center, have displays during Parents Weekend.
A program was held for freshmen over the Labor Day weekend in advance of the event.
Despite this increase of crime awareness, TUPD officer Linda D'Andrea said students are safe on the Medford campus. TUPD receives most of its crime reports for personal property theft, as opposed to violent crimes that D'Andrea said are more common at colleges and universities located in urban environments.
According to TUPD's annual report, there were no incidents of aggravated assault on the Medford campus in 2003, down from seven in 2002 and nine in 2001. From 2001 to 2003, there were 29 reported sexual assaults. Last year, there was an assault of a student by two gang members, both of whom were arrested by TUPD officers.
"I feel extremely safe on campus," sophomore Shane Marzola said. "I've often walked around campus at three in the morning, and I always feel safe and confident."
Marzola said he finds TUPD to have a strong presence on campus. Walking around campus without seeing TUPD is "an odd occurrence," he said.
But burglaries more than doubled from 19 reports in 2001 to 55 reports in 2003. Such personal property thefts will be the focus of TUPD's advertising efforts next month.
Laptop computer thefts are particularly numerous, and D'Andrea said simple locks that secure the computer to a desk provide an effective means of preventing theft.
"It's not foolproof if somebody has cutters," D'Andrea said. "But for the most part, the bad guy is going to say, 'I'm going to go find one that's easier,' so it's a good deterrent."
She said laptop thefts have been curbed in recent years from the severe problem they were before. "Students really seem to take it to heart when we started publicizing about laptop theft," she said.
The National Awareness Month events give TUPD an opportunity to promote its programs, including the rape aggression defense class, which is currently offered only to women but is expected to be offered to men soon.
TUPD officers also coordinate with residential duty teams - groups of residential directors and their residential assistants. In the "Have Trunk, Will Travel" program, officers go to dorms to help students register their bicycles and engrave their personal belongings, and to sell students laptop and bicycle locks.
"[The officers] are out there talking like people," D'Andrea said. "We're real people. We eat, we drink, we have coffee."
TUPD officers have also conducted an exercise called "If I Were A Thief," where officers walk around a dorm with residential assistants and leave tags on unlocked room doors and lock the doors for its inhabitants. Students who get locked out will be let back into their rooms for free, however.
TUPD also provides a round-the-clock escort program - a system D'Andrea said is underused. "Don't think that you're bothering us," she said. "Our job is service, yet some people are still a little hesitant to call."
Crime Prevention Month is designed to increase awareness, D'Andrea said, so "a lot of colleges will try to zero in on October" to raise issues of campus safety.
For some students, the added TUPD publicity may clarify the department's role on campus. Junior Heather Roughton said she feels safe walking around campus, but she does not know "how the TUPD may or may not factor into this."
