Safer Streets?

Crime on Harvard's grounds dropped more than 21 percent in 1998, according to statistics released by the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD).

What the department calls "crimes to persons," including assaults, robbery, and pick-pocketing, declined 3 percent.

"Crimes to property," including larceny, theft, trespassing and vandalism was down more than 24 percent.

HUPD Chief Francis D. "Bud" Riley credits the drop to recent community policing initiatives. Riley has appointed a top lieutenant, William K. Donaldson, to focus full-time on such initiatives.

Community policing has been an important theme through Riley's three-year tenure as chief. It aims to build trust between students, faculty and staff and HUPD officers, according to Riley.

Concretely, this has meant having officers speak to students in the Houses, work more closely with House staff. In addition, three HUPD substations--one in the Radcliffe Quad, one in the Yard and one in Quincy House--give officers a permanent place in the House system.

Since these policies were implemented, HUPD has seen a decrease in actual crime and increase in reports of "suspicious behavior"--meaning essentially that crime is often stopped before it starts.

"I'd like to think it's because of the increase in the presence of officers in the Houses," Riley says.

Bike thefts, which has long been the most numerous crime on campus, dropped 30 % last year. There were 226 bikes stolen in 1997, as compared with 158 in 1998.

"We've been doing stings in certain areas," he says. HUPD detectives have collared several repeat offenders using undercover officers.

And officers are working closely with the city of Cambridge to develop joint programs aimed at combating bike thefts.

The simplest solution to crime problem--putting more cops on the beat, especially using officers on bicycles--has also worked, Riley says.

"When [we] started bike patrols, bike crime went down significantly," Riley said. "It falls into a pattern. Thefts are down probably because of the bike officers being more readily visible."

More serious crime, including rape, robbery and assault, stayed at roughly the same level. Harvard-affiliated persons reported 17 instances of aggravated assault in 1997, and 21 incidents in 1998.

Five people reported instances of acquaintance rape. There were no reported "stranger" rapes in 1998, the statistics show.

However, earlier this month a Harvard-affiliated woman was raped by a stranger in Byerly Hall at 8 Garden St. in Radcliffe Yard. Police are still investigating that crime.

Riley says the low level of "crime to persons" can also be attributed to a phenomenon he calls "hardening the target"--training the Harvard community to better protect themselves and their property.

This includes programs like Rape Aggression Defense, a self-defense course offered free of charge to undergraduates and a recent program to make laptop computers harder to steal or resell.

"We're making the target of crimes harder to victimize."

Simple theft declined from 648 incidents in 1997 to 512 incidents in 1998.

Because of changes in federal campus-crime reporting laws included in last year's Higher Education Act reauthorization, schools like Harvard must now divulge more information about crime on their campuses to the Department of Education (DOE).

More than 100 campus administrators, administrative board members and certain staff members are designated as "reporters," meaning that they are legally obligated to report crimes they become aware of in the course of their job to the HUPD.

Peggy A. McNamara, the department's manager of information systems, has spent the past several weeks collecting data from the "reporters."

But, she says, the fact that the DOE hasn't yet written the regulations detailing the new system of reporting crime statistics is hampering her efforts.

For example, institutions like Harvard are now required to report crimes that occur in areas "contiguous" to the campus, according to a draft of the bill.

"Is the geographical boundary across the street, in the middle of the street, to the dividing line [of lanes]?" McNamara asks. "Before we know that, we will always be revising our data," she says.

But both McNamara and Riley say this year's statistics are probably the most accurate the university has ever released.

With out-dated computer systems and more haphazard ways of collecting the data, Riley said he hasn't always been convinced of truths the statistics told in the past.

But now, with McNamara working on the project and with a brand-new computer system, "I feel more comfortable now saying we're moving toward accurate data," Riley said.

McNamara said she one day hopes to be able to use the data she's collected to analyze crime trends.

"We hope to eventually link [crime incidents] to a mapping system," McNamara said. Such a system could tell officers which areas of campus are more or less prone to crime.