Early last week, the ACU Police Department sent out an email to students and staff with a report containing crime statistics from the previous calendar year.
The 50-page report is in compliance with the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Safety and Security Act (Clery Act), which requires all colleges and universities keep and disclose information about crime on and near their campus. The report shows annual crime statistics for the years 2011-2013 as well as a fire safety report.
The report, though informative, does not cover all categories of crime, so is not a comprehensive reflection of all that occurs on campus each year. There are many other categories of minor crime that are not allowed to be listed in the federal Clery Report, said Jimmy Ellison, ACU chief of police.
“It only covers categories we are required by law to publicize,” Ellison said. “The data is not reflective of every type of crime.”
The crimes listed are typically crimes that occur against people rather than against property. This is because of the origin of the act.
The Clery Act was named after Jeanne Clery, a 19-year-old student at Lehigh University who was raped and murdered in her dorm room in 1986. When it was made public that the university had hidden other attacks on campus, the protests against unreported crimes at universities all over the country resulted in the signing of the Clery Act in 1990.
The main idea behind the Clery Act is full disclosure of criminal activity with universities’ public.
“We want to be transparent when it comes to our crime statistics so our public is aware,” Ellison said.
In addition to crimes on ACU’s main campus, the report includes crimes that occur at ACU’s campus in Dallas/CitySquare as well as crimes that occur adjacent to ACU’s Abilene campus. ACU’s Study Abroad campuses in Oxford, Leipzig and Montevideo do not meet the requirements to be separate campuses but are included in the data for ACU’s main Abilene campus.
If students or faculty want to know more about crime on campus or about crimes that are not covered in the report, the ACUPD crime log can be viewed by anyone who requests it. Visit the ACU Police Department on Campus Court for more information.
