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It’s National Crime Prevention Month and the University of Maine Public Safety Department is taking advantage of it. With several new programs ready to begin or recently started, officers are working hard to spread the word. The programs are aimed at increasing community policing, which Chief of Public Safety Noel March said he believes is vital to a safe campus.
“Students … are the most important member of the police department at UMaine,” he said. “National Crime Prevention Month is the perfect time to remind them of the role they can play in community policing.”
One of the programs to be highlighted during the month is the personal safety whistle initiative. An attempt was made a few years ago to make this a lasting program, but financial issues forced its discontinuation.
Enough funds have been available this year to allow Public Safety, in partnership with Student Government, to supply 2,500 whistles.
“A person carries a whistle with them and if they find themselves in a personal safety issue, they’ll blow the whistle and it’s recognized as a cry for help,” crime prevention specialist and Public Safety officer Deb Mitchell explained.
“It’s a simple and inexpensive way to make students feel safer,” Student Government President Cortlyn Hepler said. “Whistles will compliment other initiatives for campus safety and together will make good strides in making the campus safer.”
One of the other initiatives being promoted this month is a gun lock program. Free gun locks will be given out to anyone registering a gun on campus. This is a national program public safety has adopted called Project Childsafe.
Another project being promoted during the month is the Stamp Out Book Theft program. In partnership with the University Bookstore, Public Safety will be making efforts to catch book thieves during the book buy-back season and to return lost books to their owners.
“We use invisible ink and will write either a social security number or date of birth or some other important number and it can only be detected with a black light [in the book],” Mitchell explained.
Bookstore director Bill Hockensmith elaborated by saying that usually the page numbers indicating the birth date of the student will be circled and that in most cases the last four digits of the student’s social security number will be written in invisible ink on the book.
“Most students steal books for buy-back. This makes the thief think twice when they reach down to steal a book,” Hockensmith said.
According to Hockensmith, this program was developed by a police officer with whom he teamed up to start the program at the last campus he worked at, West Texas A&M. He is unsure if other educational facilities have adopted it yet. Hockensmith is meeting with many organizations to offer the service to members.
In addition, Public Safety has begun a program called Campus Eyes. According to Mitchell, over 300 posters have been placed around campus promoting a new anonymous crime reporting page on the Public Safety Web site.
Mitchell said the program “empowers the public” by “allowing them to be a voice.” Investigations are already in progress by students who have given these anonymous tips to the police.
“You don’t have to be a cop to report something,” Mitchell said.
Public Safety also plans to continue their policy of assigning police officers to residence halls, Hockensmith said. Through the plan, officers get to know students at the hall and help out with any safety concerns or answer questions students might have. Hockensmith said this program builds a trusting relationship between students and at least one police officer so that “police aren’t only showing up when there’s trouble.”
Hockensmith says these programs also tie in to the very serious issue of strangers on campus causing trouble. Although difficult to detect, having students and staff aware of community policing techniques will help in protecting the whole university and surrounding areas, he said.
“The great risk isn’t with the student body,” Hockensmith said. “It’s with trespassers who may be looking into breaking into cars, stealing laptop computers, selling drugs, making trouble at parties or possibly committing a sex offense.”
Hockensmith advises students to become “aware of their surroundings” and to not be reluctant to report and suspicious activity.
Additional programs include a Rape Aggression Defense class organized in part by Deb Mitchell, bike registration and safe alcohol-use program. Free gun locks and whistles are available at public safety and the community policing booth in Memorial Union.
