Friday, September 25, 2009

CUNY hid crime stats

From the NY Post:

Five CUNY colleges -- including the famed John Jay College of Criminal Justice -- failed to report 73 percent of the felonies that occurred on their campuses, a bombshell state audit has revealed.

The five campuses -- John Jay, Queens, Baruch, Hunter and Medgar Evers -- didn't report 78 out of the total 107 serious crimes that occurred during 2006 and 2007, said the audit by the State Comptroller's Office. By federal law, the schools are supposed to report the total crime statistics on their Web sites for students.

The unreported crimes included 42 burglaries, six assaults and one hate crime.

One of the most surprising offenders was John Jay, which failed to report 19 of its 20 felonies. It also was criticized for keeping two sets of crime logs, one created two weeks before auditors arrived.

Of the other four colleges, Queens failed to report 28 of 34 incidents, Baruch 18 of 19, Hunter 11 of 25 -- including six aggravated assaults -- and Medgar Evers 2 of 9, including a hate crime.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are a few problems with that story.

In certain cases, such as any Manhattan CUNY campus, crimes may be reported to the local police precinct and NOT to the school's Public Safety department. A typical scenario would be when a wallet or pocketbook is taken from a desk, chair or table. That's considered a larceny. The student tells a CUNY officer, who mentions that if there are credit cards involved, the student will definitely want to go to the precinct and file a report. Many cc companies require an official NYPD report in cases like this.

A report is never filed with the CUNY school. Hence the disparity.

If an incident happens on a Manhattan street, it may be reported to the NYPD but not to the school. A Manhattan CUNY school's campus boundaries are fuzzy even to the school's administration. A student would have no clue as to whether a crime committed on the corner should be reported to his/her security department.

The NYPD doesn't give up their information easily, it's like pulling teeth sometimes. It's hard to determine if a campus' statistics are going to completely match up with the precinct's if CUNY doesn't have all the info.

Anonymous said...

I know that John Jay is definitely not as safe as a College should be but I also know that Baruch, Queens and especially Hunter are extremly safe.

Anonymous said...

i just could not resist making this comment. i graduated from this building in 1952. it was then named Haaren H.S.. prior to 1949, it was a automotive and aeronautical trades school. but so many pupils in n.y.c were academic candidates that they added it to the curriculum.
our basketball team was excellent.i was a starting forward(90 lbs.ago).
their were no riots.we were 50% caucasian and 50%
african- american/hispanic student ratios.
we sat integrated at lunch tables. then the racialists took over in our city government??? chaos!!!!