Students can obtain a paper copy of this report by calling the University Police Department at (727) 873-4444 or visiting the department’s office at 530 3rd St. S.
By Amy Diaz
The USF St. Petersburg police department recently issued the Annual Security and Fire Safety Report for the 2018-2019 school year.
The report lists total numbers of crimes reported from 2015 through 2017 by the University Police Department, campus security authorities and other law enforcement agencies.
It lists what at first may appear to be three rapes in 2017, but were actually two. The report shows that one occurred in a residential area, one on campus and one on public property.
University Police Chief David Hendry said that “campus” encompasses the residence halls, so there was one rape on the USF St. Petersburg campus, not two.
The rape that occurred on campus was filed through the Title IX process, which allows victims to elect how they wish to report and handle the situation with privacy. In this case, the victim chose not to report the incident to UPD.
“You could be the victim of a sexual assault, be the survivor, and you say, ‘Well, I don’t want to report it to the police. And, you know, here’s why,’” Hendry said. “And there’s a lot of very valid reasons as you can imagine, it is a very traumatic event. And so the person may seek the confidentiality of the Title IX process.”
The Title IX staff still has to report to the university police that an incident occurred, but they do not give the details or who was involved.
The rape that occurred on public property took place on the public sidewalk around 401 Seventh Ave. S. The victim was a woman in her 40s, with no connection to the university. She also chose not to prosecute.
“When we’re preparing the annual security report, we ask those jurisdictions that are near us, which is the city of St. Pete, to tell us what crime activity occurring in a geographic space that we’re responsible for reporting,” Hendry said. “So they run all the data, and we go through it and verify and validate that it is in our jurisdiction in the sense that it’s off campus but it’s in our reporting area. And so that’s how we report it.”
Annual university crime reports are required to be published and distributed under the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Police and Crime Statistics Act signed in 1990. It is also known as the Clery Act.
The act came about when 19-year-old Jeanne Clery was raped and murdered in her dorm room at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania in 1986. The college had several reports of dorm rooms being broken into by other students prior to Clery’s death, but theis information wasn’t shared with students or their parents.
Clery’s parents felt that campus crime was not sufficiently reported and worked to implement an act which would require universities to disclose information regarding crime statistics on and near the campus.
Even though the two instances of rape on the USF St. Petersburg annual report did not lead to investigations or arrests through the campus police, they are required to report the numbers to keep students and parents aware of the incidents that occur.
“It’s really designed as a crime prevention tool and as a transparent education tool,” Hendry said. “We report not only the activities that are specifically on campus, but also those that are in the area of campus.”
“So of course, we’re in an urban setting, we’re in the downtown, we have lots of folks that travel between here and there,” he said. “Like Tthe sidewalk is considered public property. And that public property domain goes out a few blocks. And so we have to categorize all of the activity that occurs in the area of campus.”
The report includes explanations of university policies and procedures and how to report a crime. There are also appendices which show a map of the jurisdiction of the USF St. Petersburg police and offer specific crime and incident definitions.
