Sunday, January 18, 2009

Campus crime headlines for Jan. 11-18

Some headlines related to campus crime this week...



Anxiety grips central Arkansas campus after shooting


UNC hate crimes remain hot topic

The discussion stems from racist graffiti that was written on the NC State campus following the November presidential election.

The graffiti, which was written on NC Sate's Freedom Expression Tunnel, included racial slurs referencing President-elect Barack Obama.

Members of the commission, which was created to review the incident, wanted feedback from students, faculty and staff. The commission wants to determine if there should be a university-wide policy addressing hate crimes.




Supreme Court to hear case on girl strip searched for ibuprofen

The justices accepted the case Friday for review. They will decide whether a campus setting gives school administrators greater discretion to control students suspected of illegal activity than police are allowed in cases involving adults in public spaces.

Arguments are expected to be heard in April.

At issue is whether school administrators are constitutionally barred from conducting searches of students investigated for possessing or dealing drugs that are banned on campus.

A federal appeals court found the search "traumatizing" and illegal.

Some parents say older children deserve the same constitutional rights as adults, but educators counter that a school setting always has been treated differently by the courts. They say a ruling against them could jeopardize campus safety.



District debates cops in Pasdena middle schools
A police presence at public high schools in Pasadena has curtailed on-campus violence, officials say, but not everyone is ready to embrace a plan to put armed cops in middle schools.

Across the city, a handful of Pasadena Police Department officers from the Safe Schools Team are assigned to patrol Pasadena Unified School District high school campuses, where they mediate disputes, counsel students and, occasionally, make arrests.

Up until a few months ago, Safe Schools officers also made as-needed visits to the district's middle schools, primarily when called to help mediate larger problems.



Experts says economy to blame for rise in violent crime

"As the economy has weakened the last 6 months, there are more people who turn towards criminal activity," said Janikowski.

Janikowski says with criminals getting bolder and robbing people where there are several witnesses, it will become harder to protect yourself.

"There is no perfect crime prevention technique. You can cut down the probability of being a victim, but you can never eliminate those probabilities," Janikowski said.

"I think you can take every precaution, but at the end of the day you are helpless," Evans said.




At risk youth in Austin

Their crimes don’t occur out of the blue, like a meteor strike. They are cultivated, like bacteria in the blood stream. And like confronting that pathogen, we can stop catastrophe from developing.

At least that’s the experience of Adrian Moore, a crusader for at-risk youth in Austin. In fact, he’s seen students on the cusp of violence and crime make a U-turn and become fellow crusaders for peaceful conflict resolution.

It’s all because someone got them to talk about their anger.

They do so under a program sponsored by the nonprofit Council for At-Risk Youth — CARY. The Austin-area group seeks out children most likely to turn to violence and focuses on what’s in their heads.

How to find them? That’s not hard at all.

“The most powerful predictor is whether [a student] has a serious school incident report,” Moore said.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

KSU - KU connection on rapes?

From the AP:


Police in the Kansas college towns of Lawrence and Manhattan are investigating a series of rapes of college students.

But police aren't saying it was one rapist.

In Lawrence, they already had linked one man to four attacks on five victims since 2004 and now they believe they have a sixth victim. The most recent happened December 1st, and is linked to five others dating back to 2004. The other rapes were in March of 2008, June 2006, December 2004 and July 2004. The attack in December 2004 involved two victims.

All the victims have been college age women, and three of them are University of Kansas students.

About 85 miles to the west in Riley County, police there are investigating several rapes and assaults in Manhattan where Kansas State University is located. Manhattan police are following leads in a string of rapes by a man who stalked college-age women and has picked a new victim almost every year from 2001 to 2007.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

campus crime - Bing News