Policy Research: The Clery Act - Virginia Commonwealth University

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 1

Policy Research: The Clery Act

Gail D. Moskowitz

Virginia Commonwealth University


Leaders in any organization are tasked with having facility in all facets of policy. They must know how to write, analyze, interpret and implement the many layers of material. The following

Policy Research Assignment has been designed to help the student break the study of policy into surmountable increments so as to better understand the subject in its entirety. The Jeanne Clery

Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (The Cleary Act) was chosen for the purpose of this paper (see Appendix A). The act will be described and summarized and the relevant legal issues will be discussed. A short literature review will be offered so as to highlight relevant research topics this act would engender. The reader will then find a transcript and analysis of a lively interview conducted with the chief and the assistant chief of the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) police department who interpret and implement The Cleary Act every day. In the final section of the paper conclusions and suggestions for further evaluation will be presented.

Policy Research Project-The Cleary Act

Section I: Description of Policy

Summary and Policy Type.

The Cleary Act, under the purview of The United States

Department of Education, can in some ways be simple to summarize. The act mandates that as of

August 1991 any university or college in the United States, that accesses monies from Federal

Student Financial Aid, must report any crime or attempted crime committed on the campus of that institution. The policy was first called the Campus Security Act and was later renamed in memory of Jeanne Ann Cleary; a college student brutally murdered in her Lehigh University dorm. Jeanne’s parents worked to have policies put in place that would, as the Cleary act does, protect and inform university students, employees, parents, prospective students and the community about crimes. The wording of the act then becomes cumbersome as the policy goes

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 3 on to proscribe both global concepts and minute details of how the act should be adhered to on every college campus. The Cleary Act dictates how the reporting must be done, how many years statistics will be kept, how the rights of sexual assault victims must be protected and what the consequences of failure to follow these mandates will be. The act spells out specifically what is considered crime. It states that when a situation is managed or when arrests were made; that needs to be reported as well. Ongoing threats must be published. Alliances between police/security and compliance departments, student affairs and athletics must be formed so that everyone on a college campus during an emergency will be given direction as to the appropriate response.

The Cleary Act is an example of a regulatory policy as describe by Fowler (2013). A regulatory policy is adopted by a board or organization to establish an institutionalized set of standards and protocol through which decisions will be made. In other words, it regulates response and organizes how problems will be solved. The regulations set forth by the Cleary Act can be lifesaving but they are also an arduous and expensive burden. This balance, to solve the present problem without causing undo distress, is inherent in complying with the kind of governmental regulation the Clery Act exemplifies.

Section II: Legal Issues Relevant to the Clery Act

Peterson (2011) notes that the Clery Act itself exists due to a hard fought legal and then legislative battle waged by Constance and Howard Clery. In 1987 the Clery’s sued Lehigh

University and Jeanne’s killer, Josoph Henry. The suit alleged that the University was guilty of negligence, breach of contract, as it was implied that the domicile would be safe, and finally that the university misrepresented itself in withholding real information about crime. The Clery

Center (2012) tells us that the Clery’s then took their settlement money to advocate for a change

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 4 in the law. They wanted the laws changed so as to compel universities to report and warn about all crime on campus. In 1991 the first iteration of the College Safety Act was written into law.

Since then the statutes have been revised and expanded. The U.S. Department of Education

(DOE) has enacted fines for non-compliance and has also been the defendant when case outcomes were disputed.

The DOE as Defendant . Havlik (2007) filed an appeal after losing his first attempt to prevail, to The U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island. This appeal was filed against

Johnson and Wales University by Mr. Havlik, a student. He apparently had been involved in a private argument/altercation that eventually was deemed not to be a crime and did not have to be reported by the campus police under the Clery Act. Mr. Havlik claimed that he was defamed as he was named in the report and it affected his reputation. The court affirmed the original court’s decision stating that campus authorizes must make quick judgments. The courts agreed that the report was made in good faith and the police were erring on the side of caution in an effort to comply with the law. As you will see in the interview transcript (see Appendix B) Chief V, of the

VCU police department, trains his officers to be safe and not sorry in their efforts to report all crime.

Many cases to Decide: Did VT Comply with the Act? On April 16, 2007 a mentally ill and violent student walked on to the campus of Virginia Polytechnic University (VT) and massacred

33 people; students, faculty and staff. Federal Student Aid (2011) archived the letter that was sent to the president of VT in September of that same year to inform him that the DOE administrative director was launching a review of the university’s actions in regard to complying with all aspects of the Clery Act. Again archived at Federal Student Aid (2011) is the follow up letter to the University President with notification that the campus police were found to have not

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 5 properly followed specific statutes of the Clery Act and was liable for a fine of $55,000. They were found to have not disclosed one of their policies and to have not reported the original incident in a timely manner.

In 2010 an Administrative Law Judge, Chief Justice Ernest Canellos, heard an appeal made by VT and the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia and reversed the fines.

Federal Student Aid (2014) has a letter highlighting that the DOE appealed to reinstate the fines and referenced that Universities of Vermont and Utah had been fined for similar breaches of the

Clery Act. This final appeal was heard on behalf of the Secretary of the DOE, Arne Duncan. It was found that VT had indeed been in breach of the Clery Act and had not published one of their policies and they did not report in a timely matter. This opinion was mitigated by the fact that the far reaching consequences experienced at VT had never been experienced before. The other schools who were fined had committed the same acts after the shooting at VT. He did reinstate a fine but lowered it to $5,000. The seriousness of complying with the Clery Act can have life and death implications. Unfortunately all of our laws, both men’s and divine, cannot change the course of human behavior. Slayton, J., & Bowman (2008) reported that VT, having been found liable in the civil cases, reached a settlement with the families of the 33 victims. They are not appealing that decision.

Section III: Research Issues Relevant to the Clery Act

The Clery Act has indeed established a mechanism through which crimes on campuses are reported. It also purports to reduce the incidence of crime and further the safety of those who study and work on college campuses. There is, however, scant research that reviews the efficacy of the law. In taking a quick look at some of the research it is possible to say that the jury may still be out on the usefulness of this weighty law. Below are some of the research findings.


The Efficacy of the Clery Act. Given the enormity of the effort needed to implement and sustain an accurate adherence to the Clery Act one would think that its efficacy would be consistently evaluated through rigorous research. Instead the inquiries appear to be limited and the outcomes mixed. Let’s begin with what appears to be a fairly comprehensive study conducted by Janosik & Gregory (2003). The authors distributed surveys to 944 individuals who were officially responsible for law enforcement on college properties included in the Clery Act.

They were all members of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement

Administrators (IACLEA). The instrument was written to address three questions, did the Clery

Act institutionalize a method for reporting crime on college campuses, set a standard for disseminating the information so that all invested parties could use the information in formulating optimal conclusions and did following the act diminish crime? The data confirmed that the Clery act had its greatest impact in the uniformed reporting of crime statistics. Yet another study done by McNeal (2007) found that there were still real barriers to full reporting compliance. These included funding, lack of clarity and opposition. Janosik & Gregory (2003) went on to say that the officials were by no means unanimous in their belief that the Clery Act has improved the quality of policies and procedures they use to respond to criminal acts on their campus. Only 45% and 43% respectively endorsed those items on the questionnaire. The most interesting result is that since complying with the Clery Act, 15% reported an increase of crime,

15% a decrease and 70% said the crime statistics are the same.

In another study by Janosik and this time with Gehring (2003) the authors proffer an interesting question; do students use the reports generated by campus law enforcement to make decisions about keeping themselves and their belongings safe? 9,150 undergraduates were randomly selected from both public and private colleges. Ultimately questionnaires were use

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 7 from 3,866 respondents representing 2,286 women, 1,575 men and with five who did not indicate gender. Of these only 15% stated that they had been a victim of crime at their school.

Slightly more of the students lived in on campus housing and 89% among all the students reported feeling safe. Only 24% of these students over all, accounting for gender, institution type and size and their victim status, indicated that upon admission they were aware of the act and a scant 8% used this information in making a decision about which school to attend. Further, only a small number remember getting or reading any annual report since they have been at school.

What may be the most significant finding is that only 37% stated that any prevention program or crime information influenced them to change their behavior or keep themselves safer. Given that the Clery Act demands that accurate crime statistics be kept, it could be surmised that students who did not know that they should report, would not come forward.

These kinds of ambiguities are commensurate with another study done by Nobles, Fox, Khey

& Lizotte (2013). They highlighted another difficulty in reporting found in the Clery Act and not examined in other research. They designed their research to gather data comprehensively and in a larger context to include crimes committed by and to both students and nonstudents. They used a data set from the campus police of a large state university, the municipal police reports from the adjacent community, the larger county sheriff’s department and the state level police enforcement for alcohol and tobacco. They focused on both the campus and areas off campus and used the largest sample of crime committed by students at a single school. The authors were able to map the patterns of offense through geographic information systems (GIS) mapping technology. They found inconsistencies in how crimes were reported by and to students on and adjacent to the campus. There were also discrepancies in the days of the week and the season crime was reported. They believe that geography must be taken into account when keeping and

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 8 reporting statistics for the Clery Act. These findings are another indication that the Clery Act may on some level be so immense that it is difficult to follow but also lacking a clear and full purpose.

Section IV: The Interview (See Appendix B)

The Choice and Its Purpose. As the policy examined in this paper is the Clery Act, discussed above, it was easy to choose to interview the Chief and Assistant Chief of police for

VCU, a large public school with a sprawling urban campus. The purpose of the interview was to gather from these law enforcement professionals their full understanding of the Clery Act and their professional opinions. The topics used for inquiry were:



The history of the Clery Act



The purpose of the Clery Act

 The role of the campus police in the law’s implementation and what is taken into consideration



What other departments on campus have a role in implementation



The strengths and difficulties



How to engender buy-in for implementing the Clery Act



Surprises they have encountered in implementation



Thoughts about the language

The Procedure. The procedure used for this interview was straight forward. Four students were involved one of whom works in administration on the campus and she made the calls to set up the interview. Everyone’s schedule was consulted so it took many weeks to pick a date. Each student prepared their share of 12 questions and the flow of the hour allotted was mapped out.

The interview took place in a small interview room in the VCU police station. A camera was set

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 9 up so the interview could be recorded. The first student greeted the interviewees and the last thanked them. The questions were then asked and answered.

Profiles of Interviewees. The two interviewees were seasoned law enforcement professionals. JV became the chief the VCU Police Department on February 1, 2010 with more than 25 years’ experience in law enforcement. He joined the Richmond Police Department in

1984 and rose through the ranks to major. JV has led the Metropolitan Area Drug Enforcement

Administration Task Force, working with the region’s five jurisdictions, Virginia State Police and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency. JV received a bachelor’s degree in management and leadership from Bluefield College in 2010. He has completed the FBI National Academy, as well as more than two dozen law enforcement and management training programs sponsored by federal and state agencies.

CP became assistant chief of the VCU Police Department on April 10, 2012. CP joined the

VCU Police Department in March 1994 as a patrol officer. In 1998, he was promoted to sergeant and commander of the force’s special operations unit. CP graduated from VCU in 1991 with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. He graduated from the FBI National Academy Class in

2011. He has received four public service awards from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, a number of awards for meritorious service from the VCU Police Department and the City of Richmond

Police Department and was awarded a Henrico County Police Department Police Investigative

Citation Award.

1.

Data by Question. The data gathered by each question will be briefly summarized in this section as the entire interview transcript is archived.

2.

How did the Clery Act come about?

CV reported the story of Jeanne Clery’s death and her parent’s struggle to bring college crime into focus. The first draft was the Awareness

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 10 and Security Act of 1990 and amended in 1992. Jeanne’s parents founded the organization, Security On Campus, whose website archives crime statistics from over

5,500 institutions in the United States.

3.

What is the purpose of the Clery Act?

CV explains that it is to help students and their families make conclusions based on actual information about crime and safety as they are deciding on where to attend school.

4.

What is your role with respect to the Clery Act’s implementation? CV explains that adherence to the act is a collaboration with a team across campus that meets quarterly.

Ultimately the University President is responsible for compliance. CV states that the police report the facts of crime and err on the side of caution. They see the DOE as the good guys who “get it.” CV wants to make sure they correctly enact the policy so the police are ultimately protecting the campus.

5.

What do you think the strengths of the policy are? Is it good thing, does it help in the ways it is intended?

CV believes it is intended to make the campus safer and he believes that it works. He believes that as more schools comply the federal government needs to be better at monitoring compliance.

6.

How do you get “buy in” for the policy?

CV states that they work hand in hand with the VCU Department of Compliance and they have established and upheld solid policies, protocols and work processes. CV emphasizes that they train their officers well and publish reports widely and spend much time educating the consumers.

7.

What do you imagine the process would look like for implementing the policy?

First

CV states how important it is to educate everyone about the significance of the Clery Act is. He wants to be the institution that is looked up to. He reiterates the importance of

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 11 standardized process and good training. He states, “For us the implementation was really establishing processes and protocols 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at different levels of redundancy.”

8.

Is there any language in the policy that is bothersome to you?

CP states that the act is huge, cumbersome and confusing. He also states that the campus is a “bubble” as the act does not account for the surrounding area and this is bothersome to him.

9.

What is your perception of its success and do you feel that the policy is successful?

JV states that he believes that it is successful and that the community and the campus have begun to trust the VCU PD to be open and transparent. He notes his distress about the larger media and the fear that it may keep victims from reporting.

10.

How do you know the policy is doing what it is intending to do?

CV believes that each year in the annual security report anyone can see that safety, security, educational programs are paramount and available. One can also see that buildings are accessed controlled and there is adequate security personnel. The report gives a good snapshot of all that they do to comply with the act and that it is successful.

11.

Is there anything else about the Clery Act or the policies and procedures that you feel like we haven’t talked about that might be beneficial to us?

CV states that he would like to see the act expand to address reporting all aspects of security on a college campus.

Topics and Themes. It is possible to see that the responses to the interview questions proffered to Chief JV and Assistant Chief CP cluster around certain topics and highlight certain themes. The topics of origination, purpose, role, strengths, implementation, collaboration, and success and policy language were established from the questions asked. The theme of

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 12 misinterpretation and weaknesses can be seen throughout the interview. (see Appendix C for the full expanse of topics and themes.)

Section V: Conclusions

Analyzing Values and Ideology. One of the statements made by JV was that crime was bad for business. Both interviewees stressed repeatedly how much they wanted the Clery Act to offer them a tool to create a safe and trusting university environment. They wanted order as described by Fowler (2013) who stresses that in a free society, citizens want to feel safe. Constance and

Howard Clery put their life’s blood into holding Lehigh University and Jeanne’s killer monetarily responsible. They acted with passion. They believed that using the proceeds to change the laws would add to the safety of all students and school employees. They wanted to create order out of what they saw as chaos. JV and CP believe that this is an all-important value.

Ideologically the Clery Act cannot be pegged. Fowler (2013) may have said it best in describing the process of rounding out one’s beliefs by, “rational analysis” (p. 107). None of the literature points to the Clerys’ political agenda other than to bring about regulation they saw as life-saving. The interviewees did as well. It can be argued that those who are conservative, hence republican, are against the density of government regulation and that liberal democrats think the government should be our big brother. Yet conservatives have always been strong in their war on crime. Libertarian ideology, however, has historically been more laissez-faire in all dealings with government interference. So, perhaps, ideologically, the Clery act is more in line with the continuing balance of politics as usual .

Has The Clery Act Been Successful?

Fowler (2013) lays out the flow and bumps of what implementation of a policy may look like and the Clery Act appears to have read the chapter.

The first iteration of the act, which became law in 1991, was narrowly focused on compelling

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 13 institutions to create and make available a report on security to include an accurate accounting of campus crime. Many of the barriers that existed then apparently still do. Understanding the nuances of the law was and still is cumbersome although its purpose is clear. At the beginning there was no template for implementation and even today each institution is responsible to make it work best for their campus. Implementation, staffing and other resources, is expensive and federal resources scant. While it would be difficult to imagine that the culture on any campus would sanction ignoring crime, organizations that have access to public funds are often overwhelmed by paperwork. Processes needed to be established and continuously need to be updated. Clery crime statistics are certainly not the overriding mission of an institution of higher learning. Budget money had and still must be allocated and diverted which can cause infighting and a loss of energy. The law has been amended intermittently. While it has in some sense been institutionalized , it continues to be dense and burdensome. Our interviewees and the literature point to the lag time many colleges experienced in implementation. Apparently today the vast majority of schools are complying.

Hoping for a Positive Future . The current research is not unanimous in assessing the future of the Clery Act. The ambiguity seems to lie in the present state of the act’s efficacy.

Anecdotally the interviewees for this paper, JV and CP, were consistently positive in their believes that if followed well the Clery Act functions as a rigorous template for how to report criminal behavior on college campuses and how to educate the consumers. They have confidence that compliance saves lives. The literature does not agree. Fowler (2013) writes that policy must most be evaluated by the use of good research. It is noted that once a policy has established goals , and the indicators needed to assess the goals, instruments need to be chosen to collect data . The data must be used to decide if a policy should be kept, modified or terminated (p. 282).


The evaluation of the Clery Act up to now lacks this clarity. For instance, goals are not clear. It would be imperative to ascertain if the act exists in its present day state for the purposes of reporting crime, reducing crime through education, having mechanisms in place for emergencies or giving families another tool for decisions on matriculation. Whether the constant amendments serve to further complicate the intentions needs to be examined as well. The Clery Act seems to be too important to leave any facet of it up to chance. Much more focused and rigorous research needs to be undertaken so educated decisions can be made.


References

The Clery Center (2012). Our history.

Retrieved from http://clerycenter.org/our-history.

Federal Student Aid (2011). Clery Act reports . Retrieved from

http://studentaid.ed.gov/about/data-center/school/clery-act.

Federal Student Aid (2014). Clery Act reports . Retrieved from

http://studentaid.ed.gov/about/data-center/school/clery-act.

Fowler, F. C. Policy studies for educational leaders: An introduction. (4th ed.) Upper Saddle

River: Pearson, 2013.

Havlik v. Johnson and Wales University. 07-1879 U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3 rd Circuit.

2007. LexisNexis Academic . Web. 16 Apr. 2014.

Janosik, S.M.,& Gehring, D.G. (2003). The impact of the Clery campus crime disclosure act on

student behavior. Journal of College Student Development , 44 (1), 81-91.

Janosik, S.M., & Gregory, D.E. (2003). The Clery Act and its influence on campus law

enforcement practices. The National Association of Student Personnel Administrators

Journal , 41 (1), 180-197.

McNeal, L.R., (2007). Clery Act: Road to compliance. Journal of Personnel Evaluation in

Education, 19, 105–113.

Nobles, M.R., Fox, K.A., Khey, D.N., & Lizotte, A.J. (2012). Community and campus crime: A

geospatial examination of the Clery Act. Crime & Delinquency , 59 (8), 1131-1156.


Appendix A

Jeanne Clery Act Text

As Amended Through 2008

Deleted Provisions In Strikethrough, New Provisions In Bold

20 U.S.C. § 1092(f) Disclosure of campus security policy and campus crime statistics

(1)

Each eligible institution participating in any program under this title, other than a foreign institution higher education, shall on August 1, 1991, begin to collect the following information with respect to campus crime statistics and campus security policies of that institution, and beginning September 1, 1992, and each year thereafter, prepare, publish, and distribute, through appropriate publications or mailings, to all current students and employees, and to any applicant for enrollment or employment upon request, an annual security report containing at least the following information with respect to the campus security policies and campus crime statistics of that institution:

(A)

A statement of current campus policies regarding procedures and facilities for students and others to report criminal actions or other emergencies occurring on campus and policies concerning the institution's response to such reports.

(B)

A statement of current policies concerning security and access to campus facilities, including campus residences, and security considerations used in the maintenance of campus facilities.

(C)

A statement of current policies concerning campus law enforcement, including- ‐ - ‐

(i) the enforcement authority of security personnel, including their working relationship with State and local police agencies: and

(ii) policies which encourage accurate and prompt reporting of all crimes to the campus police and the appropriate police agencies.

(i) the law enforcement authority of campus security personnel;

(ii) the working relationship of campus security personnel with State and local law enforcement agencies, including whether the institution has agreements with such agencies, such as written memoranda of understanding, for the investigation of alleged criminal offenses; and

(iii) policies which encourage accurate and prompt reporting of all crimes to the campus police and the appropriate law enforcement agencies.

(D)

A description of the type and frequency of programs designed to inform students and

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 17 employees about campus security procedures and practices and to encourage students and employees to be responsible for their own security and the security of others.

(E)

A description of programs designed to inform students and employees about the prevention of crimes.

(F)

Statistics concerning the occurrence on campus, in or on noncampus buildings or property, and on public property during the most recent calendar year, and during the 2 preceding calendar years for which data are available- ‐ - ‐

(i) of the following criminal offenses reported to campus security authorities or local police agencies:

(I) murder;

(II) sex offenses, forcible or nonforcible;

(III) robbery;

(IV) aggravated assault;

(V) burglary;

(VI) motor vehicle theft;

(VII) manslaughter;

(VIII) arson; and

(IX) arrests or persons referred for campus disciplinary action for liquor law violations, drug- ‐ related violations, and weapons possession; and

(ii) of the crimes described in subclauses (I) through (VIII) of clause (i), and clause (i), of larceny- ‐ theft, simple assault, intimidation, and destruction, damage, or vandalism of property, and of other crimes involving bodily injury to any person, in which the victim is intentionally selected because of the actual or perceived race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or disability of the victim that are reported to campus security authorities or local police agencies, which data shall be collected and reported according to category of prejudice.

(G)

A statement of policy concerning the monitoring and recording through local police agencies of criminal activity at off- ‐ campus student organizations which are recognized by the institution and that are engaged in by students attending the institution, including those student organizations with off- ‐ campus housing facilities.

(H)

A statement of policy regarding the possession, use, and sale of alcoholic beverages and enforcement of State underage drinking laws and a statement of policy regarding the possession, use, and sale of illegal drugs and enforcement of Federal and State drug laws and a description of any drug or alcohol abuse education programs as required under section

120 of this Act [20 USCS § 1011i].

(I)

A statement advising the campus community where law enforcement agency information provided by a State under section 170101(j) of the Violent Crime Control and Law

Enforcement Act of 1994 (42 U.S.C. 14071(j)), concerning registered sex offenders may be

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 18 obtained, such as the law enforcement office of the institution, a local law enforcement agency with jurisdiction for the campus, or a computer network address.

(J)

A statement of current campus policies regarding immediate emergency response and evacuation procedures, including the use of electronic and cellular communication (if appropriate), which policies shall include procedures to- ‐

(i) immediately notify the campus community upon the confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or staff occurring on the campus, as defined in paragraph (6), unless issuing a notification will compromise efforts to contain the emergency;

(ii) publicize emergency response and evacuation procedures on an annual basis in a manner designed to reach students and staff; and

(iii) test emergency response and evacuation procedures on an annual basis.

(2)

Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to authorize the Secretary to require particular policies, procedures, or practices by institutions of higher education with respect to campus crimes or campus security.

(3)

Each institution participating in any program under this title shall make timely reports to the campus community on crimes considered to be a threat to other students and employees described in paragraph (1)(F) that are reported to campus security or local law police agencies.

Such reports shall be provided to students and employees in a manner that is timely and that will aid in the prevention of similar occurrences.

(4)

(A) Each institution participating in any program under this title that maintains a police or security department of any kind shall make, keep, and maintain a daily log, written in a form that can be easily understood, recording all crimes reported to such police or security department, including- ‐ - ‐

(i) the nature, date, time, and general location of each crime; and

(ii) the disposition of the complaint, if known.

(B) (i) All entries that are required pursuant to this paragraph shall, except where disclosure of such information is prohibited by law or such disclosure would jeopardize the confidentiality of the victim, be open to public inspection within two business days of the initial report being made to the department or a campus security authority.

(ii)

If new information about an entry into a log becomes available to a police or security department, then the new information shall be recorded in the log not later than two business days after the information becomes available to the police or security department.

(iii)

If there is clear and convincing evidence that the release of such information would jeopardize an ongoing criminal investigation or the safety of an individual, cause a suspect to flee or evade detection, or result in the destruction of evidence, such information may be withheld until that damage is no longer likely to occur from the release of such information.


(5)

On an annual basis, each institution participating in any program under this title shall submit to the Secretary a copy of the statistics required to be made available under paragraph

(1)(F). The Secretary shall- ‐ - ‐

(A) review such statistics and report to the Committee on Education and the Workforce of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Labor and Human Resources of the Senate authorizing committees on campus crime statistics by September 1, 2000;

(B) make copies of the statistics submitted to the Secretary available to the public; and

(C) in coordination with representatives of institutions of higher education, identify exemplary campus security policies, procedures, and practices and disseminate information concerning those policies, procedures, and practices that have proven effective in the reduction of campus crime.

(6)

(A) In this subsection:

(i)

The term "campus" means- ‐ - ‐

(I) any building or property owned or controlled by an institution of higher education within the same reasonably contiguous geographic area of the institution and used by the institution in direct support of, or in a manner related to, the institution's educational purposes, including residence halls; and

(II) property within the same reasonably contiguous geographic area of the institution that is owned by the institution but controlled by another person, is used by students, and supports institutional purposes (such as a food or other retail vendor).

(ii)

The term "noncampus building or property" means- ‐ - ‐

(I) any building or property owned or controlled by a student organization recognized by the institution; and

(II) any building or property (other than a branch campus) owned or controlled by an institution of higher education that is used in direct support of, or in relation to, the institution's educational purposes, is used by students, and is not within the same reasonably contiguous geographic area of the institution.

(iii)

The term "public property" means all public property that is within the same reasonably contiguous geographic area of the institution, such as a sidewalk, a street, other thoroughfare, or parking facility, and is adjacent to a facility owned or controlled by the institution if the facility is used by the institution in direct support of, or in a manner related to the institution's educational purposes.

(B) In cases where branch campuses of an institution of higher education, schools within an institution of higher education, or administrative divisions within an institution are not within a easonably contiguous geographic area, such entities shall be considered separate campuses for purposes of the reporting requirements of this section.

(7)

The statistics described in paragraphs (1)(F) shall be compiled in accordance with the definitions used in the uniform crime reporting system of the Department of Justice, Federal

Bureau of Investigation, and the modifications in such definitions as implemented pursuant to

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 20 the Hate Crime Statistics Act [28 USCS § 534 note]. Such statistics shall not identify victims of crimes or persons accused of crimes.

(8)

(A) Each institution of higher education participating in any program under this title shall develop and distribute as part of the report described in paragraph (1) a statement of policy regarding- ‐ - ‐

(i) such institution's campus sexual assault programs, which shall be aimed at prevention of sex offenses; and

(ii) the procedures followed once a sex offense has occurred.

(B)

The policy described in subparagraph (A) shall address the following areas:

(i)

Education programs to promote the awareness of rape, acquaintance rape, and other sex offenses.

(ii)

Possible sanctions to be imposed following the final determination of an on- ‐ campus disciplinary procedure regarding rape, acquaintance rape, or other sex offenses, forcible or nonforcible.

(iii)

Procedures students should follow if a sex offense occurs, including who should be contacted, the importance of preserving evidence as may be necessary to the proof of criminal sexual assault, and to whom the alleged offense should be reported.

(iv)

Procedures for on- ‐ campus disciplinary action in cases of alleged sexual assault, which shall include a clear statement that- ‐ - ‐

(I) the accuser and the accused are entitled to the same opportunities to have others present during a campus disciplinary proceeding; and

(II) both the accuser and the accused shall be informed of the outcome of any campus disciplinary proceeding brought alleging a sexual assault.

(v)

Informing students of their options to notify proper law enforcement authorities, including on- ‐ campus and local police, and the option to be assisted by campus authorities in notifying such authorities, if the student so chooses.

(vi)

Notification of students of existing counseling, mental health or student services for victims of sexual assault, both on campus and in the community.

(vii)

Notification of students of options for, and available assistance in, changing academic and living situations after an alleged sexual assault incident, if so requested by the victim and if such changes are reasonably available.

(C)

Nothing in this paragraph shall be construed to confer a private right of action upon any person to enforce the provisions of this paragraph.

(9)

The Secretary shall provide technical assistance in complying with the provisions of this section to an institution of higher education who requests such assistance.

(10)

Nothing in this section shall be construed to require the reporting or disclosure of privileged information.

(11)

The Secretary shall report to the appropriate committees of Congress each institution

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 21 of higher education that the Secretary determines is not in compliance with the reporting requirements of this subsection.

(12)

For purposes of reporting the statistics with respect to crimes described in paragraph

(1)(F), an institution of higher education shall distinguish, by means of separate categories, any criminal offenses that occur- ‐ - ‐

(A) on campus;

(B) in or on a noncampus building or property;

(C) on public property; and

(D) in dormitories or other residential facilities for students on campus.

(13)

Upon a determination pursuant to section 487(c)(3)(B) [20 USCS

§ 1094(c)(3)(B)] that an institution of higher education has substantially misrepresented the number, location, or nature of the crimes required to be reported under this subsection, the

Secretary shall impose a civil penalty upon the institution in the same amount and pursuant to the same procedures as a civil penalty is imposed under section 487(c)(3)(B) [20 USCS §

1094(c)(3)(B)].

(14)

(A) Nothing in this subsection may be construed to- ‐ - ‐

(i) create a cause of action against any institution of higher education or any employee of such an institution for any civil liability; or

(ii) establish any standard of care.

(B) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, evidence regarding compliance or noncompliance with this subsection shall not be admissible as evidence in any proceeding of any court, agency, board, or other entity, except with respect to an action to enforce this subsection.

(15)

The Secretary shall annually report to the authorizing committees regarding compliance with this subsection by institutions of higher education, including an up- ‐ to- ‐ date report on the Secretary's monitoring of such compliance.

(16)

The Secretary may seek the advice and counsel of the Attorney General concerning the development, and dissemination to institutions of higher education, of best practices information about campus safety and emergencies.

(17)

Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to permit an institution, or an officer, employee, or agent of an institution, participating in any program under this title to retaliate, intimidate, threaten, coerce, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to the implementation of any provision of this subsection.

(18) This subsection may be cited as the "Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security

Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act".


Appendix B

Interview Questions

1.

How did the Clery Act come about?

2.

What is the purpose of the Clery Act?

3.

What is your role with respect to this policy’s implementation?

4.

Who are some other people (roles, not names) or departments interested in this policy?

5.

What kinds of things are considered as the policy is implemented?

6.

What are some strengths of the policy?

7.

How do you get “buy-in” for the policy?

8.

What did (you imagine) the process (would) look like for implementing the policy?

9.

Is there any language in the policy that is bothersome to you?

10.

What is your perception of the success of implementation of this policy?

11.

How will you know the policy is doing what it is intended to do?

12.

Do you have anything else you’d like to add that hasn’t been talked about?

Interview Transcription

CC: Chief Venuti and Assistant Chief Preuss, thank you again for giving us your time today. I know it is challenging coordinating so many schedules, but we do appreciate your willingness to help us. My classmates and I each have a few questions to ask you. We will be transcribing the interview, and we are more than happy to give you a copy of the transcription as well. When we were assigned this project, I immediately thought of the Clery Act. I was first exposed to it during my graduate studies when I did a brief presentation on it. Each time we get an email alert or I see the crime log, such as the one we saw on the way in, I see the Clery Act in action. Once our final paper is finished, we can also provide you a copy of the report if you are interested.

JV: Yes, thank you all for contacting us. We are glad to be able to sit down and chat with you. I would like to see your final paper as well as your paper from graduate school.

CC: Well, we will certainly get you a copy of the final paper, but the one I did and graduate school may be a little hard to dig up now. That was a while ago. If it is alright, we will go ahead and begin with the questions

JV: Nods his head in agreement.


1-CC: How did the Clery Act come about?

JV: Great question. We actually do a lot of training here within the VCU Police Department with all of our staff, at every level, pertaining to the Clearing Act. So we tell everyone the story of Jeanne Clery. Jeanne was actually accepted at Tulane. Jeanne’s brother had gone to Tulane a year earlier. I think that there was a murder on the campus of Tulane and Jeanne’s parents thought that Tulane was too dangerous for Jeanne to attend Tulane; because of that murder. So

Jean went on to attend Lehigh University. On April 5, 1986, she was raped and murdered inside of residential housing at Lehigh University. Her parents found out that there had been repeated incidences where doors have been left propped opened and unlocked in residential housing and after her death they came to the conclusion that had they known that information, that would have influenced their decision on where Jeanne attended college. So the first wave, to what is known as the Clery Act, was the awareness and security act of 1990. So it actually took her parents 4 years after she was raped and murdered to get some type of legislation moving. It was amended in 1992 and then in 1998 it became to what we now know as the Jeanne Clery Act. Her parents actually went on to found an organization called Security On Campus (SOC) and you can basically go to the SOC website and obtain crime statistics from over 5500 incidents at institutions in the United States. I actually was in New Orleans last week and saw a presentation by Allsion Kits, who is the Executive Director of SOC and I understand that Jean’s parents are not as involved with SOC now that they have gotten older and things like that.

2-CC: What is the purpose of the Clery Act…..if you had to describe.

JV: Here is how I explain it. The purpose of the Clery Act is so that parents and students can make informed decisions based on facts about crime and safety at a particular institution.

Obviously the Clery Act has expanded now and contains fire statistics, so if parents and students are looking at residential housing, they may want to consider this institution had 10 fires in a dormitory and this institution had none, this institution has sprinkler systems, different levels of fire suppression versus, etc. It is for parents and students to shop and compare based on facts reported and crime statistics from campus to campus.

3. CC-What is your role with respect to the Clery Act’s implementation?

JV: Well a lot of people are under the impression that compliance with the Federal law (the

Clery Act) is the Police Department’s responsibility and the model that we really implemented here at VCU is that it is an organizational responsibility. At the end of the day, if you want to know the 1 person who is responsible for the compliance with the Clery Act, it’s Dr. Rao, it’s not me. What we did about 2 years ago, I went to a conference of about 100 institutions and there were 2 that were doing this. Now it is commonplace and what a lot of institutions are doing is they are creating Clery coordinating groups, so the Police are one piece, residential housing is another piece, student affairs is another piece, athletics is another piece. Because, what Clery requires falls clear across the institution. So we have a Clery coordinating group that meets at least 4 times a year, and when we first started 2 years ago, we had a really, really long punch list of things that we needed to do to become more compliant with the Clery Act and I think that if you come across an institution that says “Yeah, we have got it… we are doing everything”. A lot

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 24 of it is really subject to some level of interpretation, a lot of it is really not that clear and I think what institutions do is like we do, they come up with their best interpretation, they get legal counsel, make an informed decision, and obviously compliance with Federal Law is something that is not optional, it’s mandatory. We have had a little bit of exposure with the Department of

Education. Department of Education is now doing what they call media audits. The Department of Education has a lot of compliance people. The majority of those compliance people are financial aid, title IV compliance people. They have about 10 that do crime out of the main office. So what they recently started doing is someone could obviously call the Department of

Education and make a complaint against an institution and say there was a murder and the police department didn’t do anything, which is one way. Another way the Department of Education has started to monitor the 5500 institutions that are required to comply with Clery is they do what is called Media Audits. So they wait for something to bubble up in the media, and then it gets their attention, then they will say, hey VCU, send us your past 6 months of crime warnings, crime alerts, crime logs, and all that. That recently happened to us. We had an attempted abduction that was reported to us, not long ago. We initially responded to that attempted abduction, we began investigating it. We had some initial concerns that were not based in fact so we distributed a timely warning to our community for the safety of the entire community. Once we were able to start looking at the facts and circumstances, we pieced that incident together, we began looking at all of our camera footage, and we came down to about a 3 second period of time, in which that offense could have occurred the way that it was actually reported to the police. At that point in time, the individual that reported that, kind of admitted to fabricating the story. We sent a follow up message to the community because an attempted abduction of a female student on a college campus is a big deal and people were scared, so we sent a follow up message. The other thing that we did that the Clery Act does not require was we had a lot of concern for the well-being of the individual that reported that and what the potential aftermath and what impact the false report might have on that individual, so we didn’t rush to go to the media and say it is all false and actually didn’t happen. We actually took a whole lot of time to make sure that particular student had the resources that she needed because she had a lot of other stuff going on. So that is how we drew the attention of the Department of Education. We submitted/they asked us for 6 months crime alert, all of our daily crime logs, we sent all of that up to the Department of Education, they gave us a period of 3 days before Christmas and we have excellent record keeping so it was relatively easy for us to put it altogether. They reviewed our material and concluded that it was not necessary to come to do any other look at how we were handling stuff.

GM-But you wanted them to feel a little bad for you?

4-GM: But you wanted them to feel a little bad for you?

JV:

They are the guys that get it, trust me we are the police and I get it, it’s they are just doing their job and its Federal Law, compliance is not voluntary. One of the things that we are talking to peers and other institutions, I think one of the things is subject to interpretation and everything we do here is based on fact, it’s not based on I think this might be, if it is factual, and we can support and justify that we don’t need to send a crime alert, based on fact, we won’t send a crime alert. But in that situation, like I said we had some concerns. We had a conversation, there were some concerns but we always hear “error on the side of caution” and I would much rather send a crime alert, have it be in the best interest of the community, rather than not send it and God forbid, someone gets injured or hurt as a result of it. We are very open and transparent with all of

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 25 our crime reporting, we are transparent with student media, but it really has been a little bit of a learning curve here because it does make people think that more crimes and I tell everyone it’s not more crime is occurring, it’s you are more aware of the crimes that are occurring. If you were to go to your neighborhood police department, and you were to tell them “Hey, send me a list of everything that has happened in my neighborhood”, you would get the list and be like “Oh my

GOD... he beat his wife… they took a lawnmower…” and really unless you see it, you don’t know about it, but it doesn’t mean that things aren’t happening and going on. I really believe that the Clery Act is Federal Law. I believe that students can really make the necessary decisions they need to make is safeguard themselves, is to have accurate information. We send out crime alerts if there is someone who is fondling females, etc., we make that information available so that if you run down the street, you may not run down that street, and you may run down another street.

That really is the whole purpose of the Clery Act, is to give people accurate, relative information so that they can decide what steps and measures they need to take to safeguard themselves, because the police have an obligation to do that. We are 92 police officers in a community of over 50000 people. The community has their responsibility and obviously the remainder falls on our shoulders.

5-GM: You answered the next 3 questions, but one of the things that really pops out for me is you talked about how you implement the policy. What do you think the strengths of the policy are? Is it good thing, does it help in the ways it is intended?

JV: Again, I think it works. I think its intended purpose is to make consumers more aware of safety and security on college campuses. So I think it works. I think that it is only effective as the people who are administering the program at that institution. Face it, crime is bad for business on our college campus and I think that we take the position here, we are open, we are transparent, and if it happens we are going to tell you about it. I want to be judged by not what happens, I want to be judged by how we respond by what happens. I think that if there was a weakness of the Clery Act, is that more people are complying with it than was complying with it 5 years ago.

I think it is one of those things that it’s Federal Law and I think that the Federal Government doesn’t have the pieces in place to really monitor it at the level it needs to be monitored.

6- GM: I know you answered this already in response to other questions but it would be nice to have clarity. So the other people/departments that are interested in the policies (like you said – are student affairs, fraternities/sororities, residential housing, and athletics).

You answered a lot of my questions.

.

7- PC: How do you get buy in for the policy?

JV: Well, I think one of the things that we did here within VCU is we really share the responsibility and a lot of people. You really have to look at the Clery Act as a bunch of crabs in a bucket. When one crab is at the top and he is trying to get out, the other crabs are pulling him back down. That is really how we looked at compliance with the Clery Act. It’s not solely the police department’s responsibility, it is clear across the institution. The annual security report has to be made available to new students, new employees, everyone. That is not a police department function. We publish the annual security report and that is our function. So we really took that approach. We got a lot of buy in from VCU compliance and integrity. We work hand in hand with our compliance department. You cannot listen to me, if it’s not a crime, that’s ok, compliance is a whole different story. Compliance is here to make sure everyone complies with

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 26 state, local, federal law. We are fortunate, we have a great compliance here at VCU and they are partners in helping us interpret a lot of the Clery Act, helping to guide us with a lot of the decisions that we make as far as our process and protocol. I think the other thing that is really important when it comes to issuing timely warnings, preparing crime statistics, is internally police departments need really solid policies and really solid work processes with a certain level of redundancy and that is what we have established here at VCU. We (Chris and I) find because we are the guys at 2am in the morning, on the phone, we find that very rarely it is the round peg that is in the round hole, your situation fits neatly, clean; you won’t open the handbook that sits right on the corner of my desk. It sits there all the time, on my desktop at home. But the examples in the Department of Education handbook, do not exactly fit a lot of the situations that we come across. So I think we have got to have solid policies, protocols, work processes. We really standardize the entire process. I could close my eyes, you could give me 5 different pieces of a particular situation and he can tell you “Yes – we are issuing a crime alert” or “No – we are not issuing a crime alert” and here is what we are going to do. That is important because everything is close to VCU and you go 10 blocks on the other side of Belvidere and you are close to VCU. There is a building here, how do you determine? How do you decide? We established core campus geography on our website. You go to our website and it clearly defines the areas that we report timely issues and crime alerts that occur in those areas. If it is a situation that occurs outside of that area, and it is an emerging and ongoing threat to the community, we will issue a crime alert. But again you have to have a strong criteria because we don’t have a fence right around VCU and the geography is not clean and neat, it is messy and ugly here (city, private, business, public).. the geography is difficult here. The big problem that we are having too (as the Chief mentioned) is the ongoing threat portion of it. If there is a threat in the location is gone and the robbery is right down the street and we catch him, and he is in handcuffs, there is no ongoing threat. We don’t put that out. Sometimes people hear about something like that goes down and will call and complain and there is a misunderstanding about what we do. The biggest thing if there is an ongoing threat. Obviously, we talked about the attempted abduction that turned out to be false. The guy got away and tried to drag her in the car, that is an ongoing threat and can be anywhere around her. There are certain things that can happen frequently that can determine the threat as gone and out of here and we won’t put that out. Sometimes people will be away of something that happened and they think that we are not being as open as we advertise we are. If it get moms and dads on the phones, and had 10 minutes to explain why we did what we did, everybody with the exception that I have ever talked to.. say “oh, ok.. I’m good with that”. We are not the news media, so we don’t report everything that goes on, the big thing for us if that there is an ongoing threat. I think that generates a little bit of confusion because I say the same thing, I tell everyone “If your safety is in jeopardy, we will notify you, but I am not the news media, I don’t report crimes to you.” I think people expect that you are going to tell everything that happened and report it to us within our jurisdiction on a daily crime log, every single day. We tell people who have been here for 4 years and they are like “Really?”. We just try to educate people and that is a good thing to look at on a daily basis if you are concerned with what happens here at VCU.

8 PC: What do you imagine the process would look like for implementing the policy?


JV: I came from a municipal background. I investigated violent crime in Richmond for 7 years and the requirements within higher education, is a game changer for campus law enforcement that the do things that you really need to do to comply with the Clery Act when a crime occurs.

In the municipal setting, you don’t have to do any of that. There could be a body lying on the street in Richmond and you are not required to notify anyone. If you are lucky, people will come knock on the door and see if something happened. The implementation from the get-go here at

VCU, we really understand the importance of the Clery Act. I want to be the agency that everyone else is compare to with the compliance of the Clery Act. For us the implementation was really establishing processes and protocols 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at different levels of redundancy. When I’m not here, he (Chris) can make any decision that I can make, like that

(snap of a finger). If he rings my phone and I don’t’ answer, he can make the decision and I think those processes and protocols are really important because those are the types of things that take time and when a lot of time passes and it is an emergency situation, I don’t want to be the guy saying that I tried to call my boss and he didn’t answer the phone, so we did a lot of modification of policies for timely warning, emergency situation or on the website. We modified all of those policies, clearly identified who has responsibility to do what, what’s delegated, in the event someone is not available, and we have delegated the authority for emergency alerting here, down to the level of the street. So at 3am, if there is someone running down the street shooting a gun, my supervisor that is working is going to activate the emergency notification system. Sirens are going to be blaring before they even call Chris or me (Chief). I think those are some of the things that when you implement, like I said, it is like any other process. It puts a lot of responsibility on my first line supervisors, and we tell them: make the best possible decision that you can and we will stand behind you. We have protocol cards that we all carry and basically there are three questions when they are dealing with a situation, they ask themselves. This is for emergency alerting, not timely alert notification. There is 3 questions they need to ask themselves. If they answer yes to all three of those questions, there is only one thing to do and that is to activate the emergency notification system. We have delegated that responsibility down to our first line supervision. Again, for the situation that I just explained, where I said there is a man running down the street, the first question is: “is it life threatening?” – if someone is running down the street shooting a gun – yes it is life threatening. The second question: “is it active and imminent danger?” – one would probably say yes to that. The third question: “does it require immediate action from people on campus?” – if someone is running down the street on campus with a gun, we would probably want to let them know. The only decision that needs to be made at that point, is whether or not is whether the sirens are activated on both campuses, or just on this campus. We tell our supervisors, if you are not sure, do both campuses. These are some of the things that we tried to do to really simplify the process and when you talk about a lot of supervisors here, and I want them to all make good decisions so we came up with this matrix and if it is Yes, Yes, Yes, then there is only one thing to do and that is to do the emergency alert and notify the community. That is our highest level of notification is sirens, screens, text messages, alert boxes, the whole enchilada here at VCU.

GM :When I was reading the act, I thought it was interesting that it talked about the implementation and that the federal government doesn’t tell you how to implement it, and it is specific to the campuses and that made a lot of sense as to what you are talking about.


JV : I wish to GOD that there was an implementation guide but we are a relatively large police force and we have people working all night long. When you look at the other 5500 institutions, some are closed campuses, some are gated, and some have security in and out, so a lot of it is subject to interpretation.

9- PC: Is there any language in the policy that is bothersome to you?

CP: The act in general is cumbersome, huge. It can be very confusing and we had consultants come here with basic classes and advanced classes. Sometimes a week later I walk out a little more confused than I came in. It is like the tax code, it is confusing and we are always trying to check whether we are doing the right thing; and like he said, nothing is ever black and white, always grey involved. What it comes down to is that we err on the side of caution. We are very transparent about what we do and I think to a degree perception wise. I think that in my opinion, hurts us. I am constantly combating that party, there is a perception that things are going on around here that is crazy and what it really is we have to report. The chief said something earlier about your neighborhood. The example that I use when giving classes, I lived in Chesterfield and

I had a friend of mine call me and ask me if I am missing anything out of my shed or my garage and I was like no, why. He said, “we had these guys that said they were hitting your neighborhood really hard, coming in at night after everyone is asleep, getting out of their trucks and jumping into people’s back yards and they are breaking into garages, breaking into sheds and taking power tools. I said I never knew, never heard about that. I started talking to my neighbors and they didn’t know and if that type of stuff was going on down here, we would put it out, so everyone knows, everyone thinks something is wrong. But in my neighborhood, we are all sleeping and everything’s fine and there is guys sneaking in our backyards stealing things and we are under a scrutiny about reporting that no one else is under. So this bubble here has to be reported farther away up in the Fan, you are into Robinson Street. They don’t get to know what the people down here know. Somehow that causes to me a misperception because I think if you look at statistics this is actually a pretty darn safe area, but we have to advertise everything that goes on so that we are constantly battling that perception thing, which to me is really unfair because I think this is a really safe area.

JV: I think like anything else with federal law, it’s complicated. I know that with the VA Tech trial there was reference made to the handbook. Are you familiar with the handbook? Are you guys familiar with the handbook? And, I think that the Department of Education actually testified well that the handbook is just guidance and advice, it’s not really what we want you to do. This was at the VA Tech trial. We all use the handbook. We use the handbook for guidance, because what else do we have? So it’s like what we started from the beginning. Anyone who tells you knows we are 100% on board, come on Department of Education, I always fool around with

Chris and say when the Department of Education pulls away from our building, I want them to say, “GOD, those guys try really hard” and I think that is all you can really hope for.

10- CW: You kind of touched on this with the success of the policies and implementation here at VCU so what is your perception of its success and do you feel that the policy is successful?


JV: I think here in terms of overall safety, there is a majority of the community by now knows that we are open and transparent. I think that that contributes to trust. In the world of law enforcement, trust is critical, you can’t do anything without trust. At the same time I think people here know that they are in the middle of the City of Richmond. They know that bad things can happen anywhere. So I think that everyone here at VCU has really caught on to how we operate, why we issue crime alerts, and everyone kind of understands the rationale behind all of it.

About 18 months ago, every time we issued a crime alert, I would go to my computer and it would be WTVR breaking news, boom… VCU issues crime alert.. robbery. Some of that has kind of subsided a little bit. We (Mike, I, Dr. Hanson) actually went to all of the local media and sat down with the local media.

When I issue a crime alert, for a known acquaintance sexual assault, there are two halves. Half of the world will tell you that you don’t need to issue a crime alert for a known acquaintance sexual assault, and this is more “date rape” type situation, and the other half of the world will tell you that you will have to do it. The Department of Education will tell you that it is evaluated on a case by case basis. We issue those crime alerts for acquaintance sexual assaults. When we do, it is a media story. President Obama with the reauthorization of the violence against women act is really pushing the ball for colleges and campuses to do more with sexual assault and every time I see one of those stories, I want people to come forward. Who is going to come forward? They confidentially come to a police department, make a report of a sexual assault, and I am mandated and required to issue a crime alert and that is the headline news story.

Again, it’s things like that that really, really make it difficult with navigating, and sexual assault, for purposes of the Clery Act. It is really, really complicated and we have departed to. Our crime alerts are 1% information and 99% education and prevention for females on campus. Every time we issue a crime alert for sexual assault, we get follow up reports, we get questions, so it works.

That’s the purpose for issuing a crime alert for a sexual assault and it frustrates me that we want people to come forward however, whether they want to file charges, title IX and all of the options that are available. The news story, you can tell by the way that we worded it, it is a known acquaintance situation. Most of the time it involves drug and alcohol use. Its the media that paints this picture that really doesn’t encourage survivors to come forward to the police department. It is push and pull.

GM: the other side of that are the years and years of women’s silence they just had to struggle to by themselves.

JV: For me it is frustrating because of the demographic that we deal with, we are dealing with a lot of young students who really have no idea what to do, no idea who to call, no idea to know how to even begin the process. I recently saw a visual of when a college student goes to college, it’s all the things they have to navigate, it’s dealing with residential housing, it’s dealing with a

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 30 roommate, and it’s dealing with all of these other issues. And then if things don’t go good, then it’s dealing with student affairs, and it’s dealing with all these other things and then GOD forbid you have a traumatic incident like sexual assault, there are probably 30 things swirling around this person who just moved out of mom and dad’s house and is now on their own that they have to navigate and it is ridiculous. The purpose of the information we have on our website, pertaining to sexual assault or the information contained in the crime alert section, is really to prevent the next incident from taking place. The media takes it and runs with it. It sickens me.

11: CW: How do you know the policy is doing what it is intended to do?

Well I think the simplified version of what it is supposed to do is that it is supposed to give consumers a snapshot of safety and security on a particular college campus. I am not sure if you have seen the application campus sentinel. It is a mobile application and you can compare institutions.

But I think that is the purpose of the Clery Act is to make an informed decision pertaining to safety, security, and programs, whether buildings are accessed controlled, whether there is security personnel. We articulate that in our report that we publish on a yearly basis. So, you read the annual security report, you see the annual security report, you see the prevention, the education, you see the security measures, you see the level of security, you see what the police department does, the training of the police department, the training of security personnel, depending on what state, where ever you are and I think you factor that into your decision.

12: CW: Is there anything else about the Clery Act or the policies and procedures that you feel like we haven’t talked about that might be beneficial to us?

JV: I see the Clery Act as something that over time would keep expanding and would become more comprehensive and require institutions to comply with and release more and more information pertaining to what goes on, on those campuses.

CC: I work with a lot with prospective students coming to VCU and sometimes there is a perception of what goes on at VCU. (end of file) housing, they may want to consider this institution had 10 fires in a dormitory and this institution had none, this institution has sprinkler systems, different levels of fire suppression versus, etc. It is for parents and students to shop and compare based on facts reported and crime statistics from campus to campus.

3-CC: What is your role with respect to the Clery Act’s implementation?

JV: Well a lot of people are under the impression that compliance with the Federal law (the

Clery Act) is the Police Department’s responsibility and the model that we really implemented here at VCU is that it is an organizational responsibility. At the end of the day, if you want to know the 1 person who is responsible for the compliance with the Clery Act, it’s Dr. Rao, it’s not me. What we did about 2 years ago, I went to a conference of about 100 institutions and there were 2 that were doing this. Now it is commonplace and what a lot of institutions are doing is they are creating Clery coordinating groups, so the Police are one piece, residential housing is

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 31 another piece, student affairs is another piece, athletics is another piece. Because, what Clery requires falls clear across the institution. So we have a Clery coordinating group that meets at least 4 times a year, and when we first started 2 years ago, we had a really, really long punch list of things that we needed to do to become more compliant with the Clery Act and I think that if you come across an institution that says “Yeah, we have got it… we are doing everything”. A lot of it is really subject to some level of interpretation, a lot of it is really not that clear and I think what institutions do is like we do, they come up with their best interpretation, they get legal counsel, make an informed decision, and obviously compliance with Federal Law is something that is not optional, it’s mandatory. We have had a little bit of exposure with the Department of

Education. Department of Education is now doing what they call media audits. The Department of Education has a lot of compliance people. The majority of those compliance people are financial aid, title IV compliance people. They have about 10 that do crime out of the main office. So what they recently started doing is someone could obviously call


Appendix C

Topics and Themes

Topic Interviewee

Origination

Purpose

JV1-1 : So we tell everyone the story of Jeanne Clery. Jeanne was actually accepted at Tulane. Jeanne’s brother had gone to Tulane a year earlier. I think that there was a murder on the campus of Tulane and Jeanne’s parents thought that Tulane was too dangerous for Jeanne to attend Tulane; because of that murder. So Jean went on to attend Lehigh University. On April 5, 1986, she was raped and murdered inside of residential housing at Lehigh University.

Her parents found out that there had been repeated incidences where doors have been left propped opened and unlocked in residential housing and after her death they came to the conclusion that had they known that information, that would have influenced their decision on where Jeanne attended college.

So the first wave, to what is known as the Clery Act, was the awareness and security act of 1990. So it actually took her parents 4 years after she was raped and murdered to get some type of legislation moving. It was amended in 1992 and then in 1998 it became to what we now know as the Jeanne Clery Act.

JV 1-1 : Her parents actually went on to found an organization called Security

On Campus (SOC) and you can basically go to the SOC website and obtain crime statistics from over 5500 incidents at institutions in the United States. I actually was in New Orleans last week and saw a presentation by Allsion Kits, who is the Executive Director of SOC and I understand that Jean’s parents are not as involved with SOC now that they have gotten older and things like that.

JV1-2 : The purpose of the Clery Act is so that parents and students can make informed decisions based on facts about crime and safety at a particular institution. Obviously the Clery Act has expanded now and contains fire statistics, so if parents and students are looking at residential housing, they may want to consider this institution had 10 fires in a dormitory and this institution had none, this institution has sprinkler systems, different levels of fire suppression versus, etc. It is for parents and students to shop and compare based on facts reported and crime statistics from campus to

JV 3-3 :We are very open and transparent with all of our crime reporting, we are transparent with student media, but it really has been a little bit of a learning curve here because it does make people think that more crimes and I tell everyone it’s not more crime is occurring, it’s you are more aware of the crimes that are occurring. If you were to go to your neighborhood police

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 33 department, and you were to tell them “Hey, send me a list of everything that has happened in my neighborhood”, you would get the list and be like “Oh my

GOD... he beat his wife… they took a lawnmower…” and really unless you see it, you don’t know about it, but it doesn’t mean that things aren’t happening and going on. I really believe that the Clery Act is Federal Law. I believe that students can really make the necessary decisions they need to make is safeguard themselves, is to have accurate information. We send out crime alerts if there is someone who is fondling females, etc., we make that information available so that if you run down the street, you may not run down that street, and you may run down another street. That really is the whole purpose of the Clery Act, is to give people accurate, relative information so that they can decide what steps and measures they need to take to safeguard themselves, because the police have an obligation to do that. We are 92 police officers in a community of over 50000 people. The community has their responsibility and obviously the remainder falls on our shoulders.

JV 3-4 : I think its intended purpose is to make consumers more aware of safety and security on college campuses.

CP 6-7 : It is like the tax code, it is confusing and we are always trying to check whether we are doing the right thing; and like he said, nothing is ever black and white, always grey involved.

JV 7 -10 Our crime alerts are 1% information and 99% education and prevention for females on campus. Every time we issue a crime alert for sexual assault, we get follow up reports, we get questions, so it works. That’s the purpose for issuing a crime alert for a sexual assault and it frustrates me that we want people to come forward however, whether they want to file charges, title IX and all of the options that are available. The news story, you can tell by the way that we worded it, it is a known acquaintance situation. Most of the time it involves drug and alcohol use. Its the media that paints this picture that really doesn’t encourage survivors to come forward to the police department. It is push and pull.

JV 8-10 The purpose of the information we have on our website, pertaining to sexual assault or the information contained in the crime alert section, is really to prevent the next incident from taking place. The media takes it and runs with it. It sickens me.

JV 8-11 But I think that is the purpose of the Clery Act is to make an informed decision pertaining to safety, security, and programs, whether buildings are


Role accessed controlled, whether there is security personnel. We articulate that in our report that we publish on a yearly basis. So, you read the annual security report, you see the annual security report, you see the prevention, the education, you see the security measures, you see the level of security, you see what the police department does, the training of the police department, the training of security personnel, depending on what state, where ever you are and I think you factor that into your decision.

JV-1-2 The purpose of the Clery Act is so that parents and students can make informed decisions based on facts about crime and safety at a particular institution.

JV-1-2 It is for parents and students to shop and compare based on facts reported and crime statistics from campus to campus

JV-3-5 I think its intended purpose is to make consumers more aware of safety and security on college campuses.

JV-7-10 Our crime alerts are 1% information and 99% education and prevention for females on campus. Every time we issue a crime alert for sexual assault, we get follow up reports, we get questions, so it works. That’s the purpose for issuing a crime alert for a sexual assault and it frustrates me that we want people to come forward however, whether they want to file charges, title IX and all of the options that are available

JV-8-11 Well I think the simplified version of what it is supposed to do is that it is supposed to give consumers a snapshot of safety and security on a particular college campus. I am not sure if you have seen the application campus sentinel. It is a mobile application and you can compare institutions.

But I think that is the purpose of the Clery Act is to make an informed decision pertaining to safety, security, and programs, whether buildings are accessed controlled, whether there is security personnel. We articulate that in our report that we publish on a yearly basis. So, you read the annual security report, you see the annual security report, you see the prevention, the education, you see the security measures, you see the level of security, you see what the police department does, the training of the police department, the training of security personnel, depending on what state, where ever you are and I think you factor that into your decision.


Strengths JV-1-1 -was the awareness and security act of 1990

JV-1-2 -The purpose of the Clery Act is so that parents and students can make informed decisions based on facts about crime and safety at a particular institution. Obviously the Clery Act has expanded now and contains fire statistics, so if parents and students are looking at residential housing, they may want to consider this institution had 10 fires in a dormitory and this institution had none, this institution has sprinkler systems, different levels of fire suppression versus, etc. It is for parents and students to shop and compare based on facts reported and crime statistics from campus to campus.

JV-2-2 -really long punch list of things that we needed to do to become more compliant with the Clery Act and I think that if you come across an institution that says “Yeah, we have got it… we are doing everything”.

JV-2-2 -asked us for 6 months crime alert, all of our daily crime -logs, we sent all of that up to the Department of Education, they gave us a period of 3 days before Christmas and we have excellent record keeping so it was relatively easy for us to put it altogether. They reviewed our material and concluded that it was not necessary to come to do any other look at how we were handling stuff.

JV-3-4 -I really believe that the Clery Act is Federal Law. I believe that students can really make the necessary decisions they need to make is safeguard themselves, is to have accurate information. We send out crime alerts if there is someone who is fondling females, etc., we make that information available so that if you run down the street, you may not run down that street, and you may run down another street. That really is the whole purpose of the Clery Act, is to give people accurate, relative information so that they can decide what steps and measures they need to take to safeguard themselves

JV-3-5 -I think it works. I think its intended purpose is to make consumers more aware of safety and security on college campuses. So I think it works.

JV-7-10 -I think here in terms of overall safety, there is a majority of the community by now knows that we are open and transparent. I think that, that contributes to trust. In the world of law enforcement, trust is critical, you can’t do anything without trust. At the same time I think people here know that they are in the middle of the City of Richmond. They know that bad things can happen anywhere. So I think that everyone here at VCU has really caught on to how we operate, why we issue crime alerts, and everyone kind of understands the rationale behind all of it.

JV-8-10 The purpose of the information we have on our website, pertaining to sexual assault or the information contained in the crime alert section, is really to prevent the next incident from taking place.

JV-8-11 -But I think that is the purpose of the Clery Act is to make an informed decision pertaining to safety, security, and programs, whether buildings are accessed controlled, whether there is security personnel. We articulate that in our report that we publish on a yearly basis. So, you read the

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 36 annual security report, you see the annual security report, you see the prevention, the education, you see the security measures, you see the level of security, you see what the police department does, the training of the police department, the training of security personnel, depending on what state, where ever you are

Implementation JV-1-1 Her parents actually went on to found an organization called Security

On Campus (SOC) and you can basically go to the SOC website and obtain crime statistics from over 5500 incidents at institutions in the United States.

JV-1-3 Well a lot of people are under the impression that compliance with the

Federal law (the Clery Act) is the Police Department’s responsibility and the model that we really implemented here at VCU is that it is an organizational responsibility. At the end of the day, if you want to know the 1 person who is responsible for the compliance with the Clery Act, it’s Dr. Rao, it’s not me.

JV-1-3 What we did about 2 years ago, I went to a conference of about 100 institutions and there were 2 that were doing this. Now it is commonplace and what a lot of institutions are doing is they are creating Clery coordinating groups, so the Police are one piece, residential housing is another piece, student affairs is another piece, athletics is another piece. Because, what Clery requires falls clear across the institution. So we have a Clery coordinating group that meets at least 4 times a year, and when we first started 2 years ago, we had a really, really long punch list of things that we needed to do to become more compliant with the Clery Act and I think that if

JV-2-3 you come across an institution that says “Yeah, we have got it… we are doing everything”. A lot of it is really subject to some level of interpretation, a lot of it is really not that clear and I think what institutions do is like we do, they come up with their best interpretation, they get legal counsel, make an informed decision, and obviously compliance with Federal

Law is something that is not optional, it’s mandatory.

JV-2-3 Department of Education is now doing what they call media audits.

The Department of Education has a lot of compliance people. The majority of those compliance people are financial aid, title IV compliance people. They have about 10 that do crime out of the main office. So what they recently started doing is someone could obviously call the Department of Education and make a complaint against an institution and say there was a murder and the

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 37 police department didn’t do anything, which is one way. Another way the

Department of Education has started to monitor the 5500 institutions that are required to comply with Clery is they do what is called Media Audits. So they wait for something to bubble up in the media, and then it gets their attention, then they will say, hey VCU, send us your past 6 months of crime warnings, crime alerts, crime logs, and all that.

JV-3-3 We are very open and transparent with all of our crime reporting, we are transparent with student media, but it really has been a little bit of a learning curve here because it does make people think that more crimes and I tell everyone it’s not more crime is occurring, it’s you are more aware of the crimes that are occurring.

JV-4-3 We send out crime alerts if there is someone who is fondling females, etc., we make that information available so that if you run down the street, you may not run down that street, and you may run down another street.

JV-4-4 Face it, crime is bad for business on our college campus and I think that we take the position here, we are open, we are transparent, and if it happens we are going to tell you about it. I want to be judged by not what happens, I want to be judged by how we respond by what happens.

JV4-5 It’s not solely the police department’s responsibility, it is clear across the institution. The annual security report has to be made available to new students, new employees, everyone. That is not a police department function.

We publish the annual security report and that is our function

JV-4-5 I think the other thing that is really important when it comes to issuing timely warnings, preparing crime statistics, is internally police departments need really solid policies and really solid work processes with a certain level of redundancy and that is what we have established here at VCU

JV-4-5 So I think we have got to have solid policies, protocols, work processes. We really standardize the entire process. I could close my eyes, you could give me 5 different pieces of a particular situation and he can tell you

“Yes – we are issuing a crime alert” or “No – we are not issuing a crime alert” and here is what we are going to do. That is important because everything is close to VCU and you go 10 blocks on the other side of Belvidere and you are close to VCU.


JV 4-5 You go to our website and it clearly defines the areas that we report timely issues and crime alerts that occur in those areas. If it is a situation that occurs outside of that area, and it is an emerging and ongoing threat to the community, we will issue a crime alert

JV-5-6 The implementation from the get-go here at VCU, we really understand the importance of the Clery Act. I want to be the agency that everyone else is compare to with the compliance of the Clery Act. For us the implementation was really establishing processes and protocols 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at different levels of redundancy.

JV-5-6 When I’m not here, he (Chris) can make any decision that I can make, like that (snap of a finger). If he rings my phone and I don’t’ answer, he can make the decision and I think those processes and protocols are really important because those are the types of things that take time and when a lot of time passes and it is an emergency situation, I don’t want to be the guy saying that I tried to call my boss and he didn’t answer the phone, so we did a lot of modification of policies for timely warning, emergency situation or on the website. We modified all of those policies, clearly identified who has responsibility to do what, what’s delegated, in the event someone is not available, and we have delegated the authority for emergency alerting here, down to the level of the street.

JV-5-6 So at 3am, if there is someone running down the street shooting a gun, my supervisor that is working is going to activate the emergency notification system. Sirens are going to be blaring before they even call Chris or me (Chief). I think those are some of the things that when you implement, like I said, it is like any other process. It puts a lot of responsibility on my first line supervisors, and we tell them: make the best possible decision that you can and we will stand behind you. We have protocol cards that we all carry and basically there are three questions when they are dealing with a situation, they ask themselves. This is for emergency alerting, not timely alert notification. There is 3 questions they need to ask themselves. If they answer yes to all three of those questions, there is only one thing to do and that is to activate the emergency notification system.

JV-5-6 I think those are some of the things that when you implement, like I said, it is like any other process. It puts a lot of responsibility on my first line supervisors, and we tell them: make the best possible decision that you can and we will stand behind you. We have protocol cards that we all carry and basically there are three questions when they are dealing with a situation, they

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 39 ask themselves. This is for emergency alerting, not timely alert notification.

There is 3 questions they need to ask themselves. If they answer yes to all three of those questions, there is only one thing to do and that is to activate the emergency notification system. We have delegated that responsibility down to our first line supervision. Again, for the situation that I just there is a man running down the street, the first question is: “is it life threatening?” – if someone is running down the street shooting a gun – yes it is life threatening.

The second question: “is it active and imminent danger?” – one would probably say yes to that. The third question: “does it require immediate action from people on campus?” – if someone is running down the street on campus with a gun, we would probably want to let them know. The only decision that needs to be made at that point, is whether or not is whether the sirens are activated on both campuses, or just on this campus. We tell our supervisors, if you are not sure, do both campuses. These are some of the things that we tried to do to really simplify the process and when you talk about a lot of supervisors here, and I want them to all make good decisions so we came up with this matrix and if it is Yes, Yes, Yes, then there is only one thing to do and that is to do the emergency alert and notify the community. That is our highest level of notification is sirens, screens, text messages, alert boxes, the whole enchilada here at VCU.explained, where I said

JV 6-6 When I was reading the app, I thought it was interesting that they talked about the implementation being that the federal government doesn’t tell you how to implement it, and it is specific to the campuses and that made a lot of sense as to what you are talking about. I wish to GOD that there was an implementation guide but we are a relatively large police force and we have people working all night long. When you look at the other 5500 institutions, some are closed campuses, some are gated, and some have security in and out, so a lot of it is subject to interpretation.

CP 6-7 it is like the tax code, it is confusing and we are always trying to check whether we are doing the right thing, and like he said, nothing is ever black and white, always grey involved. What it comes down to is that we error on the side of caution we are very transparent about what we do and I think to a degree perception wise, I think that in my opinion, hurts us.

JV 6-7 We all use the handbook. We use the handbook for guidance, because what else do we have? So it’s like what we started from the beginning. Anyone who tells you we are 100% on board, come on Department of Education, I always fool around with Chris and say when the Department of Education pulls away from our building, I want them to say, “GOD, those guys try really hard” and I think that is all you can really hope for.


Collaboration JV-1-1We actually do a lot of training here within the VCU Police

Department with all of our staff, at every level, pertaining to the Clearing Act.

JV-1-1So it actually took her parents 4 years after she was raped and murdered to get some type of legislation moving. It was amended in 1992 and then in 1998 it became to what we now know as the Jeanne Clery Act. Her parents actually went on to found an organization called Security On Campus

(SOC) and you can basically go to the SOC website and obtain crime statistics from over 5500 incidents at institutions in the United States. I actually was in

New Orleans last week and saw a presentation by Allsion Kits, who is the

Executive Director of SOC and I understand that Jean’s parents are not as involved with SOC now that they have gotten older and things like that.

JV-2-3 -the model that we really implemented here at VCU is that it is an organizational responsibility. At the end of the day, if you want to know the 1 person who is responsible for the compliance with the Clery Act, it’s Dr. Rao

JV-2-3 I went to a conference of about 100 institutions and there were 2 that were doing this. Now it is commonplace and what a lot of institutions are doing is they are creating Clery coordinating groups, so the Police are one piece, residential housing is another piece, student affairs is another piece, athletics is another piece. Because, what Clery requires falls clear across the institution. So we have a Clery coordinating group that meets at least 4 times a year, and when we first started 2 years ago

JV-3-4 there were some concerns but we always hear “error on the side of caution” and I would much rather send a crime alert, have it be in the best interest of the community, rather than not send it and God forbid, someone gets injured or hurt as a result of it. We are very open and transparent with all of our crime reporting, we are transparent with student media,

JV-3-4The community has their responsibility and obviously the remainder falls on our shoulders.

JV-3-4I think one of the things that we did here within VCU is we really share the responsibility and a lot of people. You really have to look at the

Clery Act as a bunch of crabs in a bucket. When one crab is at the top and he is trying to get out, the other crabs are pulling him back down. That is really how we looked at compliance with the Clery Act. It’s not solely the police department’s responsibility; it is clear across the institution. The annual security report has to be made available to new students, new employees, everyone. That is not a police department function. We publish the annual


Success security report and that is our function. So we really took that approach. We got a lot of buy in from VCU compliance and integrity. We work hand in hand with our compliance department. Compliance is here to make sure everyone complies with state, local, federal law. We are fortunate, we have a great compliance here at VCU and they are partners in helping us interpret a lot of the Clery Act, helping to guide us with a lot of the decisions that we make as far as our process and protocol.

JV-5-8 -When I’m not here, he (Chris) can make any decision that I can make, like that (snap of a finger). If he rings my phone and I don’t’ answer, he can make the decision and I think those processes and protocols are really important because those are the types of things that take time and when a lot of time passes and it is an emergency situation, I don’t want to be the guy saying that I tried to call my boss and he didn’t answer the phone, so we did a lot of modification of policies for timely warning, emergency situation or on the website. We modified all of those policies, clearly identified who has responsibility to do what, what’s delegated, in the event someone is not available, and we have delegated the authority for emergency alerting here, down to the level of the street. So at 3am, if there is someone running down the street shooting a gun, my supervisor that is working is going to activate the emergency notification system. Sirens are going to be blaring before they even call Chris or me (Chief). I think those are some of the things that when you implement, like I said, it is like any other process. It puts a lot of responsibility on my first line supervisors, and we tell them: make the best possible decision that you can and we will stand behind you.

JV-5-8We have delegated that responsibility down to our first line supervision.

JV-6-8We tell our supervisors, if you are not sure, do both campuses.

JV-7-8 I think here in terms of overall safety, there is a majority of the community by now knows that we are open and transparent. I think that, that contributes to trust. In the world of law enforcement, trust is critical, you can’t do anything without trust. At the same time I think people here know that they are in the middle of the City of Richmond. They know that bad things can happen anywhere. So I think that everyone here at VCU has really caught on to how we operate, why we issue crime alerts, and everyone kind of understands the rationale behind all of it.

JV-7-8 Every time we issue a crime alert for sexual assault, we get follow up reports, we get questions, so it works. That’s the purpose for issuing a crime alert for a sexual assault.


JV-8-9 Well I think the simplified version of what it is supposed to do is, is that it is supposed to give consumers a snapshot of safety and security on a particular college campus. I am not sure if you have seen the application campus sentinel . it is a mobile application and you can compare institutions.

Policy

Language

CP-6-9 The act in general is cumbersome, huge. It can be very confusing and we had consultants come here with basic classes and advanced classes.

Sometimes a week later I walk out a little more confused than I came in. It is like the tax code, it is confusing and we are always trying to check whether we are doing the right thing; and like he said, nothing is ever black and white, always grey involved. What it comes down to is that we err on the side of caution. We are very transparent about what we do and I think to a degree perception wise.

JV-7-9 I think like anything else with federal law, it’s complicated. I know that with the VA Tech trial there was reference made to the handbook. Are you familiar with the handbook? Are you guys familiar with the handbook? And, I think that the Department of Education actually testified well that the handbook is just guidance and advice, it’s not really what we want you to do.

Themes Interviewee

Misperceptions/Weaknesses JV2-3 -A lot of it is really subject to some level of interpretation, a lot of it is really not that clear and I think what institutions do is like we do, they come up with their best interpretation, they get legal counsel, make an informed decision, and obviously compliance with Federal Law is something that is not optional, it’s mandatory.

JV-3-5 of the Clery Act, is that more people are complying with it than was complying with it 5 years ago. I think it is one of those things that it’s Federal Law and I think that the Federal

Government doesn’t have the pieces in place to really monitor it at the level it needs to be monitored.

CP-4-7The big problem that we are having too (as the Chief mentioned) is the ongoing threat portion of it. If there is a threat in the location is gone and the robbery is right down the street and we catch him, and he is in handcuffs, there is no ongoing threat.


We don’t put that out. Sometimes people hear about something like that goes down and will call and complain and there is a misunderstanding about what we do. The biggest thing if there is an ongoing threat. CP The act in general is cumbersome, huge. It can be very confusing and we had consultants come here with basic classes and advanced classes sometimes a week later I walk out a little more confused that I came in. it is like the tax code, it is confusing and we are always trying to check whether we are doing the right thing, and like he said, nothing is ever black and white, always grey involved.

JV-6-9So this bubble here has to be reported farther away up in the Fan, you are into Robinson Street. They don’t get to know what the people down here know. Somehow that causes to me a misperception because I think if you look at statistics this is actually a pretty darn safe area, but we have to advertise everything that goes on so that we are constantly battling that perception thing, which to me is really unfair because I think this is a really safe area. I think like anything else with federal law, it’s complicated.

JV-7-10- About 18 months ago, every time we issued a crime alert, I would go to my computer and it would be WTVR breaking news, boom… VCU issues crime alert.. robbery..

JV-7-10We issue those crime alerts for acquaintance sexual assaults. When we do, it is a media story. President Obama with the reauthorization of the violence against women act is really pushing the ball for colleges and campuses to do more with sexual assault and every time I see one of those stories, I want people to come forward. Who is going to come forward? They confidentially come to a police department, make a report of a sexual assault, and I am mandated and required to issue a crime alert and that is the headline news story. Again, it’s things like that that really, really make it difficult with navigating, and sexual assault, for purposes of the Clery Act, It is really, really complicated and we have departed to, our crime alerts are 1% information and 99% education and prevention for females on campus. Every time we issue a crime alert for sexual assault, we get follow up reports, we get questions, so it works. That’s the purpose for issuing a crime alert for a sexual assault and it frustrates me that we want people to come forward. However, whether they want to file charges, title IX, all of the options that are available. The news story, you can tell by the way that we worded it, it is a known acquaintance situation. Most of the time it involves drug and alcohol use. The media that paints this picture that really doesn’t encourage survivors to come forward to the police department. It is push and pull.

JV-8-10- The media takes it and runs with it. It sickens me.


Implementation JV-1-1 Her parents actually went on to found an organization called Security On Campus (SOC) and you can basically go to the

SOC website and obtain crime statistics from over 5500 incidents at institutions in the United States.

JV-1-3 Well a lot of people are under the impression that compliance with the Federal law (the Clery Act) is the Police

Department’s responsibility and the model that we really implemented here at VCU is that it is an organizational responsibility. At the end of the day, if you want to know the 1 person who is responsible for the compliance with the Clery Act, it’s Dr. Rao, it’s not me.

JV-1-3 What we did about 2 years ago, I went to a conference of about 100 institutions and there were 2 that were doing this. Now it is commonplace and what a lot of institutions are doing is they are creating Clery coordinating groups, so the Police are one piece, residential housing is another piece, student affairs is another piece, athletics is another piece. Because, what Clery requires falls clear across the institution. So we have a Clery coordinating group that meets at least 4 times a year, and when we first started 2 years ago, we had a really, really long punch list of things that we needed to do to become more compliant with the

Clery Act and I think that if

JV-2-3 you come across an institution that says “Yeah, we have got it… we are doing everything”. A lot of it is really subject to some level of interpretation, a lot of it is really not that clear and I think what institutions do is like we do, they come up with their best interpretation, they get legal counsel, make an informed decision, and obviously compliance with Federal Law is something that is not optional, it’s mandatory.

JV-2-3 Department of Education is now doing what they call media audits. The Department of Education has a lot of compliance people. The majority of those compliance people are financial aid, title IV compliance people. They have about 10 that do crime out of the main office. So what they recently started

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 45 doing is someone could obviously call the Department of

Education and make a complaint against an institution and say there was a murder and the police department didn’t do anything, which is one way. Another way the Department of Education has started to monitor the 5500 institutions that are required to comply with Clery is they do what is called Media Audits. So they wait for something to bubble up in the media, and then it gets their attention, then they will say, hey VCU, send us your past 6 months of crime warnings, crime alerts, crime logs, and all that.

JV-3-3 We are very open and transparent with all of our crime reporting, we are transparent with student media, but it really has been a little bit of a learning curve here because it does make people think that more crimes and I tell everyone it’s not more crime is occurring, it’s you are more aware of the crimes that are occurring.

JV-4-3 We send out crime alerts if there is someone who is fondling females, etc., we make that information available so that if you run down the street, you may not run down that street, and you may run down another street.

JV-4-4 Face it, crime is bad for business on our college campus and I think that we take the position here, we are open, we are transparent, and if it happens we are going to tell you about it. I want to be judged by not what happens, I want to be judged by how we respond by what happens.

JV4-5 It’s not solely the police department’s responsibility, it is clear across the institution. The annual security report has to be made available to new students, new employees, everyone. That is not a police department function. We publish the annual security report and that is our function

JV-4-5 I think the other thing that is really important when it comes to issuing timely warnings, preparing crime statistics, is internally police departments need really solid policies and really solid work processes with a certain level of redundancy and that is what we have established here at VCU


JV-4-5 So I think we have got to have solid policies, protocols, work processes. We really standardize the entire process. I could close my eyes, you could give me 5 different pieces of a particular situation and he can tell you “Yes – we are issuing a crime alert” or “No – we are not issuing a crime alert” and here is what we are going to do. That is important because everything is close to VCU and you go 10 blocks on the other side of Belvidere and you are close to VCU.

JV 4-5 You go to our website and it clearly defines the areas that we report timely issues and crime alerts that occur in those areas.

If it is a situation that occurs outside of that area, and it is an emerging and ongoing threat to the community, we will issue a crime alert

JV-5-6 The implementation from the get-go here at VCU, we really understand the importance of the Clery Act. I want to be the agency that everyone else is compare to with the compliance of the Clery Act. For us the implementation was really establishing processes and protocols 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at different levels of redundancy.

JV-5-6 When I’m not here, he (Chris) can make any decision that

I can make, like that (snap of a finger). If he rings my phone and

I don’t’ answer, he can make the decision and I think those processes and protocols are really important because those are the types of things that take time and when a lot of time passes and it is an emergency situation, I don’t want to be the guy saying that I tried to call my boss and he didn’t answer the phone, so we did a lot of modification of policies for timely warning, emergency situation or on the website. We modified all of those policies, clearly identified who has responsibility to do what, what’s delegated, in the event someone is not available, and we have delegated the authority for emergency alerting here, down to the level of the street.

JV-5-6 So at 3am, if there is someone running down the street shooting a gun, my supervisor that is working is going to activate the emergency notification system. Sirens are going to be blaring before they even call Chris or me (Chief). I think those are some of the things that when you implement, like I said, it is like any other process. It puts a lot of responsibility on my first line

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 47 supervisors, and we tell them: make the best possible decision that you can and we will stand behind you. We have protocol cards that we all carry and basically there are three questions when they are dealing with a situation, they ask themselves. This is for emergency alerting, not timely alert notification. There is 3 questions they need to ask themselves. If they answer yes to all three of those questions, there is only one thing to do and that is to activate the emergency notification system.

JV-5-6 I think those are some of the things that when you implement, like I said, it is like any other process. It puts a lot of responsibility on my first line supervisors, and we tell them: make the best possible decision that you can and we will stand behind you. We have protocol cards that we all carry and basically there are three questions when they are dealing with a situation, they ask themselves. This is for emergency alerting, not timely alert notification. There is 3 questions they need to ask themselves. If they answer yes to all three of those questions, there is only one thing to do and that is to activate the emergency notification system. We have delegated that responsibility down to our first line supervision. Again, for the situation that I just there is a man running down the street, the first question is: “is it life threatening?” – if someone is running down the street shooting a gun – yes it is life threatening. The second question: “is it active and imminent danger?” – one would probably say yes to that. The third question: “does it require immediate action from people on campus?” – if someone is running down the street on campus with a gun, we would probably want to let them know. The only decision that needs to be made at that point, is whether or not is whether the sirens are activated on both campuses, or just on this campus. We tell our supervisors, if you are not sure, do both campuses. These are some of the things that we tried to do to really simplify the process and when you talk about a lot of supervisors here, and I want them to all make good decisions so we came up with this matrix and if it is Yes, Yes, Yes, then there is only one thing to do and that is to do the emergency alert and notify the community. That is our highest level of notification is sirens, screens, text messages, alert boxes, the whole enchilada here at VCU.explained, where I said

JV 6-6 When I was reading the app, I thought it was interesting that they talked about the implementation being that the federal government doesn’t tell you how to implement it, and it is specific to the campuses and that made a lot of sense as to what you are

POLICY RESEACH: THE CLERY ACT 48 talking about. I wish to GOD that there was an implementation guide but we are a relatively large police force and we have people working all night long. When you look at the other 5500 institutions, some are closed campuses, some are gated, and some have security in and out, so a lot of it is subject to interpretation.

CP 6-7 it is like the tax code, it is confusing and we are always trying to check whether we are doing the right thing, and like he said, nothing is ever black and white, always grey involved. What it comes down to is that we error on the side of caution we are very transparent about what we do and I think to a degree perception wise, I think that in my opinion, hurts us.

JV 6-7 We all use the handbook. We use the handbook for guidance, because what else do we have? So it’s like what we started from the beginning. Anyone who tells you we are 100% on board, come on Department of Education, I always fool around with Chris and say when the Department of Education pulls away from our building, I want them to say, “GOD, those guys try really hard” and I think that is all you can really hope for.

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