A report from a campus safety task force formed last month suggests the city's college and universities, in coordination with police, pay more attention to areas bordering their institutions.
While statistics indicate crime on local college campuses is down, the surrounding areas serve as a fertile territory for criminals.
Crime bordering the Georgia Tech campus, for example, has risen since 2008, according to statistics provided by the APD. From Oct. 29, 2009, through July 1 of this year, Tech police reported 63 "safety alerts" — only 16 of which occurred on campus.
The top recommendation of the task force, convened by Atlanta City Council President Ceasar Mitchell and including local college and university presidents and police chiefs: More surveillance cameras to focus on areas "in the immediate vicinity," the report states.
A new digital high definition camera costs about $6,000, including installation, according to the task force. Mitchell estimated this work can be completed within a year. Funding would come from the universities.
The committee also proposes the creation of a citywide student safety council that would meet regularly with college and university police departments and the APD.
Though campuses are safer, the criminals have become more brazen, creating "a perception that students are at an increased risk," according to the report.
In July, a 20-year-old undergraduate awoke in his Tech dormitory room to find two men stealing his laptop, cell phone and wallet.
"Move, and I'll shoot you dead," one of the suspects told the victim at gunpoint, according to a Tech police report.
That incident came a little more than a week after three other students were mugged off-campus by armed thieves.
Students have to take care not to make themselves attractive targets, said Mitchell, who proposed mandatory safety awareness classes.
"I believe there are little things that students can do if they're aware to avoid being victims of crime," Mitchell said.
Other recommendations suggested by the task force include:
- Installing and improving lighting on and around campus;
- Improve coordination between all campus police departments, MARTA police and the APD;
- Launch the city's Crime Stoppers program on each campus;
- Conduct semi-annual campus community safety audits and;
- Encourage the General Assembly to extend campus police jurisdictions and increase penalties for crimes committed on or near campuses and against students.
"A number of these recommendations, if not most, can be completed almost immediately," Mitchell said.
Those that require increased funding, such as improving the video surveillance networks, "will take a little more time," he said.
From 2010-11, there were four homicides, four rapes, 135 aggravated assaults, 39 burglaries, 161 pedestrian robberies, 170 residential and commercial robberies, 296 cases of auto theft and 1,886 larcenies on and around the city's college campuses, according to APD data.
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