UC Crime Rate Down 13 Percent in 2009, Nearly Halved in Last 12 Years

National Police Week is a chance for communities to show their appreciation for those who work to keep things safe and, along with a public event celebrating police excellence at the University of Cincinnati on Wednesday, there are additional reasons for those at UC to feel good this week about public safety efforts in the campus community.

New crime stats show that criminal activity declined at UC in 2009, continuing a trend that shows a dramatic reduction in crime over the last 12 years. The statistics also show that UC compares very favorably with other large, urban research-intensive universities around the nation.

Figures compiled by the University of Cincinnati Police show that on-campus total crime decreased by 13 percent in 2009 compared to 2008. Off-campus total crime decreased by five percent over the same period.

Since the late 1990s, crime trends at UC have been very positive. In FBI-compiled crime stats, UC was right around the level of 800 crimes per year in both 1997 and ’98. That was the beginning of a steady decline in crime rates on campus, culminating in 2009 in the best year yet – a total of 432 crimes, according to that same FBI report.

UC Police Chief Gene Ferrara believes the key to these results has been a focused attempt to educate the campus community on effective crime prevention practices. “We’ve been engaged in efforts like the HABIT card campaign to reduce auto break-ins, presentations during residence hall orientations at the start of the year and table tent cards in Tangeman University Center and the libraries reminding people of the things that make them vulnerable to theft,” Ferrara says.

Property crime, overwhelmingly in the form of the disappearance of unsecured items, continues to account for the vast majority of on-campus crime at UC.

UC’s off-campus success is also showing solid returns from a new policing strategy. An area that students have expressed concern about in past years was street robberies that occurred in the evening after dark in the neighborhoods around campus.

Working cooperatively with partners in the command structure of Cincinnati Police’s District 4 and District 5 – which both border up against parts of campus – a “partner car” program was launched last September. It involves a UC police officer riding with a Cincinnati officer on the streets neighboring campus. In the eight months since the program was launched, robberies have decreased 21.6 percent compared to the same eight-month period from 2008-09.

“We are very fortunate to have a great working relationship with the Cincinnati Police Department,” Ferrara says. “Because of that, we are able to aggressively work together on issues of concern that are near campus.”

UC’s decreasing crime trends also stack up well against similar universities. Compared to a list of 18 other universities that roughly match UC’s profile – located in an urban setting, student population of more than 20,000 and research-intensive in mission – the average crimes committed per every 1,000 students was 3.94 per year at the peer universities in 2008 (the most recent year that full figures are available for all schools). At UC in 2008, that compares to a figure of just 2.30 crimes committed per every 1,000 students.

Ferrara adds that again that result reflects well upon the success of crime prevention efforts at UC. The peer university group has an average of 341 students per each staff member working in public safety. With a smaller staff at UC, the average is 465 students per staff member.

“We have put together projects to educate our community, because the vast majority of what we deal with is thefts,” Ferrara says. “The perception of some people is that there should be no crime on campus, which of course isn’t realistic. We can prove to people we’ve been improving safety year after year and that, in fact, it is safer on campus than in cities of comparable size.”

Students are young and in most cases inexperienced in living away from home. Ferrara believes, then, that this creates a different mission for a university police force.

“Our job is to educate them. We’re supposed to help students make the transition of living independently from mom and dad, and to do that safely,” says Ferrara. “We want to help them make that transition. Our job is not to protect them from consequences as much as it is to teach them how to be independent and make decisions that protect themselves.”

UC Police will be reaching out to the campus community again on Wednesday, May 12, when they will host an on-campus Special Services demonstration as part of National Police Week. UC Police will be displaying an array of crime-fighting and crime-prevention tools that they are able to call on, and will be joined by special units of the Cincinnati Police Department, such as the Canine Unit and the Cincinnati Mounted Patrol.

The event begins at 11 a.m. on McMicken Commons, the large grassy area immediately outside of Tangeman University Center.