Crime Continues to Fall on UC Campuses Date: April 13, 2000 By: Carey Hoffman Phone: (513) 556-1825 Archive: General News Newly released statistics show that crime decreased on UC's West and East Campuses by 17 percent during 1999. Figures from UC's Police Records section show that Part I offenses dropped from 420 in 1998 to 348 in 1999. Part I offenses include all categories of violent crime, and serious property crime such as burglary and theft. They reflect the offenses that the FBI uses in compiling its Uniform Crime Report. The 1999 drop comes on top of a decrease from 1997 to 1998. "A lot of factors contribute to this," UC police chief Gene Ferrara says. "Part of it is that we are a microcosm of society and crime has been going down for the last several years in Cincinnati. We reflect that. But we have also tried to increase visibility here and we've been successful in making arrests in cases (involving repeat offenders)." Viewed in perspective, violent crime was minimal at UC in 1999. Ferrara says an estimated 50,000 people are on UC's five campuses each day during the regular school year. Yet only 14 violent crime reports were filed all year. "It's not the number of crimes that show how safe a community is, it's the ratio," Ferrara says. "For a community our size, that ratio shows us to be extremely safe. The risk factor here is very low." Ferrara points to a couple of other factors which may influence campus crime stats. One is a strong commitment to community-oriented policing, where UC police begin working in cooperation with students as early as orientation in building relationships that strengthen crime awareness across campus. A newer initiative is a strengthening of the relationship with the Cincinnati police from Districts 4 and 5, the two police districts which surround UC's East and West campuses. Supervisors from UC police and those two districts now meet on a regular basis to discuss how they can work more effectively together. "The real answers to a safe community are partnerships," Ferrara says. An analysis of crime rates from last spring at major colleges and universities in The Chronicle of Higher Education showed that UC had one of the lowest rates of drug-, alcohol- and weapons-related crime in Ohio.