Tarleton State University Pledges Multiple Reviews of Crime Reports

Tarleton underreported crimes students called

into campus police between 2003 - 2005.

Photo by Samantha Lee/Texan News Service

Posted Sept. 5, 2007

By Wyatt Norman
Texan News Service
Tarleton State University police records will undergo multiple reviews this year to make sure reporting errors made during the last three years will not be repeated, a top university administrator says.
Tarleton recently revised a required federal report about crime on the Stephenville campus, substantially increasing the number of offenses reported to police.
The revised document listed three reports of sexual offenses and 64 burglaries on campus between 2003 and 2005. The old report disclosed none of the sex offense reports and 29 burglaries.
Jerry Graham, Tarleton vice president for finance and administration, said in an email this summer that the 2006 report on campus crime, which will be released this fall, “will be reviewed at multi-levels within the university police department with a final review by the chief…
“In addition, a team of upper-level Tarleton administrators will review the final University Police data as well as conduct an annual review of all 2006 University activity to verify that the crimes are categorized
correctly according to the definitions in the Clery Act,” Graham said.
The Clery Act requires colleges and universities to disclose seven categories of serious crimes, including burglaries and sex offenses, to the federal government and campus communities.
Tarleton revised its report for 2003-2005 last spring, some five weeks after student journalists published articles in the campus newspaper, the J-TAC, raising questions about the accuracy of crime information the university disclosed to the U.S. Department of Education. Tarleton Police Chief Robert Hooper has declined to comment about the revised report or the new review process.
After the revised report was released, Graham said the revision was needed because of police “misinterpretations.”
“There was no defined reason for not reporting any of the incidents,” Graham said. “Misinterpretations occurred by university police between the use of subjective judgment of hard evidence and the definitions of the Clery Act.”
Tarleton student journalists, working with the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas’ Light of Day Project, called numbers in the university’s report into question. Using the Texas Public Information Act, the students obtained 1,900 pages of police reports documenting an array of campus crime, including more than 60 burglaries between 2003-2005 and 10 sex offenses since 2002. Five of the 10 sex offense reports were filed during the 2003-2005 reporting period.
The J-TAC published three articles last spring based on the students’ reporting that documented the university’ apparent underreporting of campus crime. A spokesman for Security on Campus, a national organization dedicated campus safety, said the articles raised “major concerns” about such cases are handled.
he university responded by appointing a committee of administrators to review crime reporting procedures.
The Texan News Service is a project of Tarleton State University’s journalism program. Contact us at texannews@tarleton.edu.