Diamondback Online - The University of Maryland's Independent Daily Student Newspaper

Issue date: 7/3/08 Section: News

With 18 crime alerts sent out in the first five months of the year, students have grown accustomed to quickly learning about assaults, robberies and other campus crimes. But while the alerts have disappeared - there were none in June - that doesn't mean crime has.

In South Campus Commons Building 5, a student was attacked June 21 by an ex-boyfriend with a knife. And the University Police online-incident log lists dozens of instances of smaller-scale criminal activity, such as items stolen from cars and buildings on the campus and several vehicle thefts.

Police statistics show 41 property crimes last month, up from 27 in June 2007. That includes five motor vehicle thefts, compared to only one last June.

Despite all this activity, no crime alerts have been sent to the student population - bucking the year's average of more than three per month. Dillon said alerts are often only sent out for crimes that affect the entire campus population.

"A crime alert ... is generally sent for crimes that present a danger to the community," he said. "If there's a pattern of cars being broken into, we might send one out, too. We make that decision based on each individual case."

In the case of the Commons 5 assault, Dillon said no alert was sent out because the crime was a domestic matter.

"We did not think that this man is a threat to anyone else," he said. "If a man is stalking his wife, we don't send out an e-mail to everybody: 'Hey, this man is stalking his wife - look out; he might stalk you.'"

Last summer, University Police sent out several crime alerts for incidents including an assault and two armed robberies, though they failed to send crime alerts for a string of possibly related cases of rape and sexual assault near the campus. Though no random violent crimes have taken place on the campus so far this summer, Dillon acknowledged the lack of alerts could suggest to students crime isn't occurring at all in the area.

"I guess you could argue that it would lull people into a false sense of security," he said. "We want people to use all the safety and security measures that are available to them."

However, Dillon insisted there is generally less on-campus crime during the summer because there are fewer people on and near the campus.

"When you get to June, there are less people on campus, so there are less potential victims," he said.

The June crime statistics do show a marked drop-off in activity from May, in which there were between 59 and 79 property crimes in that month in each of the past five years. There were also three robberies this May, compared to no more than one in each of the last six Junes, and none this June.

Dillon said police are doing more than in some years past to prevent crime, including extensive camera monitoring and "vigorous investigations" of crimes.

"We're certainly hopeful [the crime alert-free summer] will continue. It's always our goal to reduce violent crime," Dillon said.

Dillon would not speculate, however, about the number of crime alerts that may go out before the fall semester.

holtdbk@gmail.com

This is a corrected version of the original story.

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