Crime related to Colorado Mesa University students in the Grand Valley is dropping, according to the annual Clery report.
The Clery report from CMU shows that rape was down to three cases in 2016 versus eight cases in 2014. Burglary dropped from 10 cases in 2014 to three cases in 2016. Aggravated assault moved from 6 cases in 2014 to zero cases in 2016.
The trend is apparent in The Criterion’s weekly blotter as well, in which the 2017-18 academic year show an average of less than seven items listed per week. And, not all of these reports are crimes verified as committed by students; some are simply reports of stolen property without known perpetrators.
Director of Campus Safety and Student Conditions Pua Utu said that the number of student-related incidents has dropped “tremendously” this year. He thinks that the availability of reporting resources, as well as a sense of ownership amongst the students, has an impact on the number of incidents.
“We’re encouraging them to report any suspicious activity, suspicious people. They all feel the pride or sense of ownership that they want to be part of the university, so they are reporting everything,” Utu said. “When they report things and our uniformed officers are responding to take those, it plays a big part.”
At most other mid-size schools in Colorado, the crime rates seem to stay steady, rather than decrease slightly as they have at CMU. Other than the much larger Colorado State University, CMU has the highest count of on-campus rape, with eight reports in 2014. Smaller universities, such as Western State University (WSU) do not have a single reported rape in the last three years. A similar trend can be seen at Adams State University (ASU), University of Colorado-Colorado Springs (UCCS) and Colorado State University Pueblo (CSU-P), where reports of rape vary by less than one case from year to year.
The same is true at most schools regarding aggravated assault, which only dropped significantly at CMU and at ASU, the latter from five cases to zero. In the case of on-campus burglary, only CMU and UCCS saw decrease, with the latter reducing reported cases from six to two.
At CMU, the only category in which crime increased was arrests for drug-related violations on campus. The number of arrests increased from 62 in 2014 to 98 in 2016. The amount of drug-related disciplinary referrals, however, decreased dramatically, from 114 in 2014 to 26 in campus residence halls. CSU-P was the only other mid-size Colorado school to see a decrease in drug-related arrests, from 21 in 2013 to 12 in 2015.
With all the reporting templates available online, Utu hopes it is now easy for anybody to report. In addition to technology helping, the increased visual presence of uniformed officers may have an impact on decreasing crime levels.
“I think the last couple of years, too, our officers are a lot more visible. They are a lot more engaged. They are involved with a lot of student activities,” Utu said. “And that plays a big role, too, on your comfort level.”
CMU has also been running prevention operations and increased foot patrols, although the focus is primarily on education rather than enforcement.
“We will be firm and sturdy on enforcement. That’s no problem,” Utu said. “But we have learned through this environment, especially on a college campus, education is a lot, it will go farther than just booking somebody up and going to jail.”
Though crime at CMU seems to be decreasing, at least based upon the last three years of Clery report data, crime in the city of Grand Junction is on the rise.
The Grand Junction Police Department 2016 annual report shows that crime has been increasing in the Grand Junction area since 2012. According to Heidi Davidson, the GJPD public information officer, crime statistics analysis and community education may help to lower the current trend, but crime cannot be stopped altogether.
According to the 2016 annual report, there were 87 cases of rape, an increase of 31 from the 56 rape cases in 2012.
Aggravated assault also had little fluctuation until 2016. 2012 and 2013 each had 89 cases, 2014 had 95 cases and 2015 had 88 cases. In 2016, though, there were 140 cases of aggravated assault, 52 more cases than the previous year.
One of the things GJPD has done is take a look at patterns that can be targeted and analyzed. The agency was able to fill their crime analyst position on a permanent basis in 2016. The goal is to be more data-driven and increase the ability to respond to sudden crime trends.
“The reality, though, is that there are simply some things that we can’t control or explain,” Davidson said. “Certainly, proactive, visible enforcement can be a deterrent for things like DUIs and drug violations. However, we aren’t always able to prevent some crimes, like domestic violence or child abuse. There are factors involved, societal issues, which we aren’t always able to control or influence.”
Though the efforts of the GJPD to limit crime through community education, proactive and visible enforcement and new resources, the agency recognizes that complete crime elimination is not something that can be accomplished.
“No doubt, community education and resources are imperative, but it’s unrealistic to think that we’ll ever be able to prevent all crime, even with valuable tools like our crime statistical analysis,” Davidson said.
Despite the negative correlation between crime on campus related to students and crime in the city unrelated to students, both GJPD and campus safety officers echo similar strategies, as both emphasize the importance of education.
