The Virginia Crime Commission's Campus Safety Task Force will meet this month to review the findings of a two-year study of safety on the campuses of colleges and universities around the Commonwealth, including the University.
According to the Crime Commission Executive Director, Kim Hamilton, the study is an effort to create basic standards by which the schools should act to increase security.
"We spent 20 months looking at every two- and four-year community, private and public institutions," Hamilton said. "We were supposed to come up with best practices for campus safety and programs to improve safety on campus."
Initiated in 2003, the study originally was suggested to the Commission by Virginia21, a lobbying group made up of student body presidents of Virginia colleges and universities. The group seeks to increase awareness in the General Assembly about issues facing higher education institutions.
While the group asked that statewide practices be established, the Crime Commission expanded the program to survey what the security situation is at schools across the Commonwealth.
According to Hamilton, the Task Force visited between 15 and 20 schools across Virginia, including U.Va.
The level of criminal activity differs significantly from campus to campus because of the diversity of school settings in Virginia, she added.
"What may be the best practices differ by institutions," Hamilton said. "There is a difference being in urban Richmond and rural Blacksburg."
On their visit to the University, the Task Force members evaluated various aspects of the University Police Department, said Michael Coleman, deputy chief of the University Police Department.
"They looked at a variety of different things: the number of officers, the shifts, the number of crimes in our system and the equipment we have," Coleman said.
According to Hamilton, the University has one of the best-equipped campus police departments in the state.
"U.Va. has one of the better funded police departments and shares communication systems with local authorities," Hamilton said. "U.Va. is one of the few schools that has that ability."
Coleman also recognized the strengths of the University's Police Department.
"I am very aware that we are very positively compared to other universities," he said. "One thing is that we strive to be professional. We are in the first waves in things like emergency preparedness and response."
The findings of the study will be reviewed at two Task Force meetings this month and will be presented to the Crime Commission later this year. Any legislation that results from the program will be taken to the state General Assembly when its next session begins in January.
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