Cracking Down On Campus Crime

Lee Cowan On Demands For Fuller Disclosure Of Risk, Better Protection

(CBS) 
Although violent crime on campus is down 54 percent according to one study, campus police departments are now under the microscope like never before, Cowan says.

"They're not equipped to handle a homicide or death investigation, because it's not something they're specially trained for," says S. Daniel Carter, of the group Security on Campus, which describes itself as a "national non-profit campus security organization geared to the prevention of college and university campus crime, and crime victim assistance."

Campus police do solve thousands of crimes each year, Cowan notes. But, to be fair, he adds, some of the schools are the size of small cities.

"We have," observes East Tennessee State University Police Chief Jack Cotrel, "the same problems, the same issues, that any other jurisdiction has to deal with."

But, when East Tennessee State student Robbie Nottingham was found dead below a balcony at his apartment, Cotrel's officers ruled it a suicide.

Nottingham's parents think he might have been pushed. Their fear is they may never know.

Says Nottingham's father, Jim Nottingham: "They didn't secure the room, they didn't secure the scene, they didn't take fingerprints until days later."

The Nottinghams pressed for change, and last year, Tennessee's governor signed legislation requiring campus police to call in outside detectives to help investigate rapes or deaths.

But getting schools to disclose a violent crime isn't always easy.

"They don't want to scare students and parents from going to their school," Security on Campus' Carter says.

Under federal law, schools must warn students of potential threats and make their crime stats public, but a study has shown only about half were believed to be in full compliance.

When journalism students tried to get crime statistics from the University of Texas at Dallas, for instance, they were stonewalled, says Cowan.

"They fought my students at every step of the way in terms of giving out information," reports Southern Methodist University Journalism Professor Craig Flournoy.

At least eight campus rapes were never disclosed to students, an investigation that made front-page news.

There is no ivory tower of immunity from crime, Cowan concludes, but what parents, and now students, are increasingly demanding is an open book on the threat and a diligent approach to fighting it.