Violent Crime at UT Steadily on Rise Since 2015
At approximately 9 p.m. on November 27, a 41-year-old woman was stabbed near the University United Methodist Church at the University of Texas at Austin. The woman was admitted to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries, but the incident brings back into the spotlight UT’s problem with a steadily increasing rate of violent crimes.
Compared to other Texas public universities such as Texas A&M, University of Houston, and Texas Tech, in 2016 UT had the third least amount of violent crimes among them, closely behind A&M and UH who had 14 and 18 violent crimes.
But according to data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting, there were 13 violent crimes on UT’s campus in 2016, slightly more than twice as many in 2015. The FBI defines violent crimes as offenses that include murder, non-negligent homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Among the 2016 crimes was the killing of UT first-year student Haruka Weiser, the first murder on campus since the Texas Tower shooting in 1966. Weiser’s death prompted safety concerns on campus, which led to security assessments and changes by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) at the request of UT President Gregory Fenves. Some of the changes and improvements included increased lighting on campus at night, and the Sure Walk program, which offers students a ride or someone to walk home with at night.
“Sure Walk is a lifesaver,” first-year Sarah Koshy, who lives at Duran dormitory, said. “The walk from the PCL to Duran at night would be really sketchy without it.”
On March 24, UT released its strategic plans to improve campus security and posted them on the utexas.edu website. The posted plans stated that “some [strategy elements] are complete and some are in progress.” A little more than a month later on May 1, first-year Harrison Brown was stabbed and subsequently died while on campus. Additionally, in September a student was assaulted not far north of campus in Harris Park, and in October another was assaulted near the 7-Eleven on Guadalupe Street. Violent crimes in all of Austin rose 2.2 percent to 3,687 from 3,309 between January and October 2017.
Meanwhile, non-violent crimes at UT have since 2015 decreased by 15 percent and, UT has less non-violent crimes compared to the other three universities.
UT Department of Police Chief David Carter said that the increase in violent crimes was not much higher in terms of the overall crime trends in Austin and the nation, and feels that the UT campus is safer than the general Austin area. Still, Carter hopes that this trend does not continue to rise.
William Spelman, a criminal justice professor at UT and former member of the Austin City Council who worked on police reform, says that the trend shouldn’t be cause for alarm.
“It’s too early to tell what will happen with only two years of data or why it’s happening,” Spelman said. “But what needs to happen is more cooperation between the police and people. Fast police response can only do so much.”
In an interview with KVUE, UT criminal justice professor Michael Lauderdale said that the rise in crime is because the current number of police officers in UTPD can’t keep up with Austin’s growing population.
“We’ve not been increasing the number of officers, the population has been growing,” Lauderdale said. “The more officers you have, particularly on the street, the less crime.”
When asked why he thought violent crimes were increasing, Carter said that the increase in the homeless population around campus could be a reason.
“Our records of calls involving the homeless has been increasing over the last few years,” Carter said. “What we think is that more individuals have come into the area.”
Carter said another reason could be a lack of communication between the UTPD and the Austin Police Department (APD). After the assault of the student near the 7-eleven on Guadalupe street in October, UTPD did not immediately know that a student had been involved in the encounter. Although west campus is mostly populated by students, it falls under APD jurisdiction, and the APD does not have to disclose the incident because it is not subject to the Clery Act. The Clergy Act requires that all colleges and universities which receive federal financial aid must keep and disclose information about crime on or near their campuses. In other words, it’s not APD protocol to have to immediately tell the UTPD something that happens off campus or to a non-student. This can lead to delayed warnings about incidents.
Sophomore Maurice Rissman said that the delayed warnings are a serious problem with his safety around campus.
“I was walking down Guadalupe on the 27th and noticed that there were a lot of police cars around the church,” Rissman said. “I didn’t get a text from the UT alert number about it until at least 30 minutes later.”
“We’re now reviewing our communication protocols with our partners at APD,” Carter said. Carter also plans to increase UTPD’s number of officers to 101, which he believes can be done by the end of the year.