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USF To Lock Up At Night
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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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Reader Comments
Posted by ( Ari_Hinkelberger ) on April 5, 2008 at 11:10 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
Wear Id's on a college campus. Give me a break. People committ crime. I don't think you should ruin everyones life to prevent some wacko from shooting the place up. Wearing an ID isn't going to prevent that. Its college. I think there is an expectation of safety, but an understanding of the world we live in. Very little could have prevented what happen at Va Tech and NIU. Its like Chris Rock said maybe the guy was just "Crazy" whatever happen to "crazy."
USF doesn't need gates.
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Posted by ( 5thGenTampaBay ) on April 5, 2008 at 11:57 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
could have gates that are operated electronically using the student id cards.
its not rocket science, some schools and companies do it already.
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Posted by ( Denny ) on April 6, 2008 at 12:53 a.m.
(This comment was removed by the site staff.)
Posted by ( Denny ) on April 6, 2008 at 12:55 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
I work there and what a pain in the rear those would be, whats next-a moat?
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Posted by ( DarthMandingo ) on April 6, 2008 at 5:40 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
If it's the kind of gates i'm think of, if someone is walking all they have to do is walk around the gate..and in 1996 (i'm showing my age) at wvsu we were buzzed in by someone at the desk...c'mon usf this is 2008 either use keycards or electronic cards, like most office building have
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Posted by ( drdneast ) on April 6, 2008 at 10 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
I want every person to have a barcode and a microship implanted on them.
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Posted by ( yborbarfly ) on April 6, 2008 at 11:13 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
I lived on campus for several years and observed many other problems they should address. Several doors to buildings were left unlocked at night, mostly to large classrooms and such. Many secured doors at living facilities were broken, that is, everyone knew you could give the doors a hard pull and they would open, even though they were locked. Many times the police officers working the night shifts would waste quite some time, if not hours, flirting with female students. There was one officer who would come by every few nights to spend time with someone in one of the dorms. Another officer would come by several times a night and just sit and socialize with students drinking outside late at night, sometimes staying for almost an hour. Mayber increased supervision of the officers themselves would increase security.
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Posted by ( voxpopuli ) on April 6, 2008 at 1:53 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
this is ridiculous. is usf in the business of education or TERRORISM???
This is highly ridiculous. One selective murder on campus. MILLIONS TO LOCK IT DOWN. MILLIONS DIVERTED FROM THE EDUCATION OF STUDENTS>
This is a watermark of selective education.
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Posted by ( drjermainelkennedy ) on April 6, 2008 at 2:15 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
USF may need hire more police on campus. They sure do have a large fleet of Police vehicles just sitting around on the back end of campus though. I hardly ever see any police on campus unless there is a major event on campus (i.e. sports, concerts, etc.). The presence and frequent sitings of security will reduce crime on that campus. One way to reduce the cost if they don't want to hire a large amount of Police Officers is to hire student security officers who ride around on golf carts at night and call University Police on suspicious behavior or activity like many universities in the north (i.e. SUNY, State University of New York campuses). Presence is the key! All the extra money should be used to EDUCATE the young minds on that campus!
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Posted by ( Gen2Native ) on April 8, 2008 at 10:28 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
Years ago, as a student employee, I saw a guy wandering around our building so I offered to provide directions. During the conversation, I discovered that he was "just looking around" and had no purpose on campus - he looked like any other grad student complete with book bag. He walked away from me and I promptly called our dean's office to report him in the building. He was just a face in the crowd and who knows what he was up to.
It is a large campus and even if you fenced the entire place, people would get in undetected.
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