Report looks at ULV safety

by Emily Low
Staff Writer

The Annual Security Report to the Campus for the Calendar Year 2002 was released recently by the Director of Campus Safety and Transportation John Lentz.

The report reveals six criminal offenses on campus in 2002: one robbery, one aggravated assault, three burglaries and one arson offense.

This is twice as many criminal offenses than 2001.

Additionally, 2002 saw 31 liquor law violations, five drug offenses and one weapons violation, resulting in a total of 37 arrests.

These statistics were also a substantial increase from 2001’s four drug infractions and 15 liquor offenses.

“When you look at the report, six criminal offenses in a 12-month period is unbelievably low,” said Lentz. “However, petty theft is our biggest problem, other than our liquor law violations. We probably had about 20 occurrences of petty theft last year. The report gives us an idea of trends, but is not necessarily accurate to a small campus like ULV with few crimes,” Lentz said.

Requirements for what must be reported have changed since 2000, which also explains the jump.

“Before the change, for example, if there were five people caught for a liquor law violation at a party, it was considered one incident in the report. The current number is not great. I would be more concerned about risky behavior such as drinking and driving,” said Ruby Montaño-Cordova, associate dean of Student Affairs.

ULV is required to publish and distribute an annual campus security report to students and employees each year.

It is important to note that the statistics represent only alleged criminal offenses reported to campus safety authorities or local police agencies. Therefore, the data does not necessarily represent actual prosecutions or convictions of crimes.

Campus Safety encourages students to report all criminal activity and all suspicious incidents, regardless of how insignificant, to the department at extension 6666.

Reports of in-progress crimes can be made directly to the La Verne Police Department by dialing 911.

The University’s annual security report can be found in full online at the OPE Campus Security Statistics Web site. For more information visit www.ulv.edu.