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USF To Lock Up At Night

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By ADAM EMERSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 5, 2008

Updated: 04/05/2008 11:11 pm

TAMPA - To Bruce Benson, the University of South Florida is a "hugely open and accessible campus" - and not in a good way.

There are 17 entrances, many of them surrounded by neighborhoods where drug crimes, violence and petty larceny are common. Sixty percent of the campus crimes - mostly thefts and burglaries - occur when an outsider comes in, looking for an opportunity.

Benson, USF's newly named director of public safety, organizes a collection of modestly staffed forces to repel those criminal acts. Three months into his job, he's been assured of funding to carry out his work, even though the university faces millions in budget cuts.

Among the proposed changes:

•The university plans to erect gates soon at a half-dozen of its entrances and close access from midnight to 6 a.m.

•New police officers will patrol the campus, along with dozens of security guards, despite a hiring freeze the university imposed elsewhere to save money.

•Benson soon will consolidate the university's disparate security dispatch services at a time when talks are under way to replace an aging police headquarters with a state-of-the-art building.

USF is committing to the changes just months after a consultant told the university that it needed more police and better security. Students, the consultant wrote, "have an expectation that the University will take steps to provide for their safety."

Although the university will keep main entrances off Fowler and Fletcher avenues open, gates will rise at about six entrances in the coming months to restrict late-night and early morning traffic.

Benson calls the tactic "target hardening," a way of securing the university to help make it less attractive to criminals. Although the number of crimes went down at USF last year compared with 2006, 60 percent of them were committed by people with no affiliation to the university.

"It's a sign that says, 'If you're up to no good, don't come onto our campus and do it here,'" said Benson, who retired from Michigan State University in 2002, having served for 15 years as its police chief.

Benson admits he heard from student government leaders concerned that gates would make the university harder to get in and out of. In an interview, student government President Garin Flowers said the reaction among student leaders was mixed.

"We're open to the idea, but I wouldn't say we're for it," Flowers said. "People want to be safe, and this is one way to help."

Cutting Costs

Whatever the method, the costs will be minimal.

Police initially planned to install gates that could close automatically. The university, however, is weighing how to cut $55 million from its budget this year and next.

Considering that, Benson said a security team will plan for gates that security guards can close manually and padlock.

While cuts will weigh on all campus services, Benson said he plans to save the university money by consolidating several disparate agencies - private and university - that dispatch police, security guards and parking enforcers separately.

Whatever money he saves, Benson can put into his own operations, USF Chief Financial Officer Carl Carlucci said.

The operations require hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional money. For starters, Benson says he needs a full-time emergency manager to communicate with other emergency services in the area and to develop a plan in the event of a catastrophe.

About half the state's public universities have such a position.

A salary for the job comes to about $60,000, Benson said. The board overseeing the state's universities has asked the Legislature for money to install emergency managers at six universities, but lawmakers are wary of any request these days that comes with a price tag.

When disaster hits, however, "there would be a bigger cost not to do it," said Benson, who says he has approval to fill the job regardless of the Legislature's action.

More Police

Then there's police staff. The university recently hired three officers to fill its modest ranks to 42 sworn officers, yet it has vacancies for seven more.

Recruiting has been a challenge. The university and the police union recently reached an agreement to boost the starting salary of police officers from $35,041 to $38,000 a year.

The money is available to Benson to hire the remaining seven, even though the university is eliminating 100 vacant faculty positions to trim the budget.

A $1 million contract with security firm Allied Barton gives USF an additional 42 unarmed security guards to aid police in often menial tasks. But USF police leaders say that having more officers allows the school to provide more community-oriented policing, something Benson was known for enhancing at Michigan State.

"We can cover more student clubs, more athletic teams, more residence halls," USF Police Chief Thomas Longo said. "It gives us more to work with."

Then the university needs a new police building to house them, said the consultant who surveyed USF's security needs.

The current building is outdated, wrote Thomas Seamon, a former Philadelphia deputy police commissioner, who called for the university to build a state-of-the-art headquarters that can serve as an emergency operations center for the university.

USF is planning for such a building, though its construction could be a ways off. It's No. 136 on the university's five-year wish list to the state.

Meanwhile, Benson is seeking buy-in for another of Seamon's recommendations: having students and staff wear their ID cards while they're on campus.

Although Seamon suggested USF require everyone wear IDs for all to see, Benson is seeking volunteers.

"We're not going to force this," he said.

Reporter Adam Emerson can be reached at (813) 259-8285 or aemerson@tampatrib.com.

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