Public Safety plans to add separate ‘incident log’ to website

Cumulative list to include petty theft, vandalism, battery

Public Safety will begin posting a cumulative list of crimes on its website later this semester, which would include incidents like petty theft, vandalism and battery that take place on and around Chapman’s campus, said Chief of Public Safety Randy Burba.

Right now, Public Safety publishes a daily crime log in compliance with the Jeanne Clery Act, which requires that universities disclose information about crime on campus. But the Clery Act has specific guidelines about what crimes the school is allowed to report, Burba said, which is why Public Safety is choosing to release more detailed information.

“What people don’t understand about the Clery Act is that it’s a very specific federal mandate,” Burba said. “We can’t put incidents in our crime log that aren’t crimes because (the Clery Act) won’t allow us.”

Public Safety can publish acts like vandalism and petty theft, which, in California, is the theft of any item(s) valued at $950 or less. While these acts are considered crimes under the Clery Act and are required to be included in each week’s crime log, Public Safety is not required to publish these incidents in the Annual Security Report, which is a breakdown of the reported crimes that took place over the previous year. Burba thinks it would be useful for students to have a resource to see the yearly totals of certain crimes.

“My proposal was that we include the annualized aggregate of these types of crimes rather than just the ones that are mandated under Clery,” Burba said.

Another technicality of the Clery Act makes it difficult for Public Safety officers to verify that a crime occurred if they receive an anonymous report, such as in a case of sexual assault. Under the Clery Act, they are required to list the report on the daily crime log regardless.

“A student can send us an anonymous form through (University Rape Crisis Counselor) Dani Smith’s office that they were sexually assaulted. We put that on the crime log (even if) we don’t have any additional information,” said former Captain of Public Safety Craig Lee.

Public Safety officers do not have the authority to unfound a crime, which means investigating the incident and determining whether or not it actually happened.

Even if Public Safety officers know that a crime report is false, they are still obligated to pass the report to the Orange Police Department, which does have the authority to unfound a crime. If it is determined by the police that no crime took place, Public Safety will change the status to “Unfounded” but would not remove it from the log. However, Lee said that crimes are almost never unfounded by the police department.

“You could give me something that’s completely false, and I know it’s false, and I still have to ship it over to (the police),” Lee said.

Another restriction of the Clery Act is geography. The university has to report any crime that takes place on campus, but if it reports a crime, such as a sexual assault, that happens off campus or outside of Clery-mandated geography, the university could be fined, Lee told The Panther in October. However, Burba said the new incident log would likely not include reports of sexual assault that take place out of Clery Act geography.

“I would never put anything (on the new crime log) that wasn’t required unless it was also OK with the student,” Burba said. “They don’t want to see their story plastered all over the place. They don’t want to see it on the crime log.”

Burba said that when students report sexual assaults that are out of Clery geography, Public Safety often never finds out. This is because the student will either report the assault directly to the Title IX office or to the Orange Police Department. Either way, Burba said, Public Safety would not be involved.

Correction: This article previously stated incorrect time increments for Public Safety’s incident log, which is updated daily.

Clarification: Information on the Public Safety incident log cannot be taken off. If a crime is unfounded by local police and that status is relayed to Public Safety, Public Safety would update the disposition of the entry to “Unfounded”.