PRESIDENT Cynthia Teniente-Matson
Do you have any plans to collaborate with UPD or any policy plans to reassure students that these issues will at least decrease over time?
I don't think there's any one human being that could suggest that we have all the answers to how to decrease crime. If we did this problem would have been solved in the United States already, right? [. . .] Some of these issues are very common across university campuses across the United States. They tend to ebb and flow with the economy, sometimes with weather, sometimes with other localized issues in our community. I have met with Chief Carroll and I have talked with him about how we are helping to lift campus safety because I've heard from students that campus safety is always a concern. And they are addressing this by doing more Meet and Greet information[. . .] Recently I had an opportunity to speak with Mayor Mahan and one of his initiatives is to look at improving our statistics, meeting and lowering the incidences of crime in our city. [. . .] We're the largest landholder in Downtown and we have the largest mass with 40,000 people that are here on any given day [. . .] So we're talking about the potential for putting some meetings together Task Force style, between the city of San Jose, the sheriff, our campus police, perhaps other entities of which they have large security forces that are also doing business in this region, to help put all of our best minds and efforts thinking about how we improve and ensure safety reduction of crime incidences as you're referring to around the community.
What have you been hearing from students? What have you been learning from students?
My second day on campus. I went over to the residence halls and participated in the orientation sessions with some of the orientation advisors, just a handful of the advice or not the orientation advisors, but the orientation employees, student employees, and the student RAS to talk with them about safety. And actually, they brought it up. I didn't go to talk to them about safety. I went to talk to them about what their experiences were and wanted to introduce myself how I can help them and they brought up some of the conversations around safety. So I brought that back to Nina Chong, our A.S. President to say, ‘What can we do more together to address some of these comments that are coming up?’ And we've also then followed up in a meeting with Chief Carroll.[. . .] He is putting a lot of effort and initiatives into what's occurring in the university community to try to reduce incidences. When I talk with other students, one of the questions I've been asking some students and I've been going to the various colleges and meeting with students so I met with some students in the science College of Sciences and I met with some students in engineering. Some of the things I was asking them specifically, is about communication. Do they feel they are getting the emergency alerts? Are they aware of what these methods mean? To help all of us build a community of safety, sort of say something? See something, do something because many, there's many more students and they're our staff and police. So we all need to be moving on this in the same direction. So those are the types of discussions I've been having with students, not just about safety, but about a number of things to help us all solve the problem together.
We talked about it last month, Michigan, just happened. The students do get notifications about shootings that happen near campus. Do you have any response on how students can feel safer on campus?
We have active shooter training that comes through our police department.[. . .] We offer quite a bit of training to students on the runway. [. . .] Run Hide Fight training here to ensure students know what to do if they find themselves in that sort of situation. Our police department is a bit available to provide specialized training for groups in the residence halls, we offer the training on a regular basis, quite frankly, a lot of students don't participate in the training. They don't find it of interest, or they don't think it'll happen to them. So there are quite a few proactive things that are occurring.
Is there any conversation around that?
They still expect what we've encountered here on the university campus, they're worried about the national issue. So they're worried about Michigan State, they're worried about Memphis. They're worried about issues that impact law enforcement globally. [. . .] We try to reassure them that our department operates a little differently than what you see in the national news. We try to assure them about public safety with our new route high fight initiative. So our officers are continuously scheduling RUN, HIDE fight training, campus wide initially, it was just something that we had available to those who inquired but now we're more intentional by holding about posting in our own meetings.
UPD CHIEF Michael Carroll
Can you explain how police address crime issues on campus?
As the chief of police, we try to identify some of the issues and concerns of the entire college campus, that faculty staff, as well as the student population. And we use what is considered a Community Capital policing model. [. . .] That's where we invest resources, we invest strategic plans to try to address the community concerns. We have a model that we use, if you see something, say something to UPD so that we can actually address it. As we work collaboratively, I hope that it helped with public safety on this college campus. So one of the things that we see an increase then is death. We try to strongly advise the student population.
How is the situation with blue phones on campus?
There's over 300 blue light phones on our campus. Prior to joining July of last year, we did an assessment about the blue light phones. We found out that 35% were not working. And so as of September of last year, we had 100% compliance, blue light phones are actually operable. I strongly encourage people to believe that we have to trust the system. We have to trust that the blue light form actually works. The minute you pick up a blue light phone, that's going to go directly into our dispatch center. And our dispatch center is going to answer the blue light phone and ask you Where you are located. What is your concern and how can we assist you.
How many students so far have been attending these, some of these trainings are the majority of these trainings, do you have an estimate?
I don't have an estimate, but I know that each class is really populated. So I don't have an exact number of how many students because we just trained individuals who show up. We don't require whether you're student faculty or staff. If you're just there for the training, we tried to train.
Do you have anything else that you would like to add?
We care for the community, we are changing and we're shifting as a law enforcement agency. We are becoming a national model with the programs and concepts that we're using to make this campus safe. So if you can help us share that message, I would greatly appreciate it.
