Visibility Prevents Crime

Over the last 3 years I have developed a style for patrolling our campus that has had a significant impact on the reduction of property crimes committed on or near our campus. There are several key aspects to this style of patrol. I call it, for the lack of better terms, Obnoxious Visibility Patrol.

We had had on average five or six cars broken into in a one block area every year and fewer broken into in other locations on the campus. Most were cars that were parked on a street in front of a dormitory. We tried extra lighting. We installed street lights that were to "light a vacant lot that we owned" because the city said the lights on the street were sufficient. We still had cars being broken into. What to do?

I decided that if we had a more highly visible way of letting people know that security was watching the campus we might cut down on the crime happening nearby. I bought a 3.5 million candlepower spotlight. As the guards make their rounds they take the spotlight and point it at various locations across the campus. We can easily light someone up from two blocks away. It began to work quite well. We had fewer larceny from auto reports. It was good but still not quite good enough to satisfy me.

Our next step was to have saturation nights. I scheduled double the normal manpower on a few nights early in the fall semsester. I scheduled this coverage on Friday and Saturday nights when we tended to have most of the auto burglaries. The guards were scattered across the campus. One night there were two men arguing (not students, just folks from the neighborhood) and one of the guards called for backup. Four guards responded and were there within seconds. The guards didn't have to say a word to the men. They saw four uniforms coming toward them and they looked at each other and said, "Let's get out of here!" They left without so much as an utterance from the guards. Word got out on the street that we had a small army protecting the campus. Most of the time we don't, but the bad guys never know when we will have a "saturation night." I started scheduling saturation nights several times each semester.

However, we still had a few larcenies from autos. It was mostly stereos being stolen. I decided to check the motor vehicle laws to see what the law said about operating flashing lights on a vehicle. The only prohibition in North Carolina was against the use of blue or red lights. I sent a note to the local police to inform them that we planned on installing a green light bar on a vehicle. It was a professional courtesy to let them know what we were doing and why, and to give them a chance to object to it even though it is legal. I began patrolling our campus and in the parking lots I would activate the obnoxious green light. I would also activate it while driving on the one street where we had had the most larcenies from autos. It worked! In the last 18 months we have had one car broken into. A student left a boom box in plain view and some bad guy came by saw it, smashed a window, reached in and the boom box was gone in five seconds.

Be obnoxiously visible and you will cut down on the chance that your campus will have a serious crime happen.