The ACU Police Department sent out the 2011 Crime Statistics and Fire Safety Report last Thursday.

The report is required by the U.S. Department of Education to be given to students and faculties at universities around the country to make them aware of the crimes that have happened on their campus.

Police Chief Jimmy Ellison said the report is helpful to creating a safer campus.

“The law is intended to make the campus community more aware of what goes on,” Ellison said.

Chief Ellison explained that over the years, most of the statistics for the university stay relatively consistent. They do not typically see significant variations in certain numbers and violations stay fairly consistent year to year.

The ACU police have recently made updates to the campus to allow students and faculty to feel safer. They joined with the Office of Residence Life Education and Housing  by adding more cameras in and around the Residence Halls.

The department also added better lighting and some additional cameras in areas near the baseball, softball and track stadiums because of the higher number of burglaries in that area. These are for the public who use the Lunsford trail at night, so that they feel safer walking back to their cars.

Chief Ellison also wants to impress upon students how important it is for students to take the 10 minutes to read the report, as being aware is a huge factor in preventing crime.

“In my opinion, we struggle here at ACU with what I call the ‘ACU bubble-mentality’,” Ellison said. “There are still so many people that assume because this is ACU that bad things can’t happen here. The fact of the matter is, that they can and do happen here. So we’ve got to get people past that point, and start thinking about taking proactive steps and preventative actions.”

Chief Ellison wanted to explain how important it is for students to help officers to keep the campus safe.

“We cannot keep this campus safe by ourselves. We have to have the students being aware and reporting suspicious activity.”