Audit reveals possible Clery Act violations by UM

An audit conducted by the Department of Education found that The University of Memphis might be in violation of four parts of a federal law requiring all colleges and universities that receive federal funding to disclose information about crime on and around campus.

The law, known as the Clery Act, is meant to protect the campus community by informing it of potentially dangerous situations in a timely manner.

The University's department of legal counsel has until Friday to respond to the allegations, which resulted from a 2010 audit. The University was notified of the findings in August of this year, which are not yet considered violations of the Clery Act.

The DOE will further review the matter after a University response to the allegations.

According to U of M associate counsel Melanie Murry, The University doesn't agree with all of the findings. She declined to comment further until The University files its official response on Friday.

The DOE's findings state that The University failed to warn students of possible danger in a timely manner in 2007 when a student was murdered on campus, failed to prepare and distribute an annual security report as a single document in 2009, failed to properly classify and report crime statistics in 2008, and failed to maintain a complete and accurate daily crime log.

Bruce Harber, U of M Police Services director of public safety, said that any reporting errors or errors in policies need to be fixed "as quickly as we can."

Harber also said Police Services is working to update its understanding of what crimes are required to be reported under the Clery Act.

"I think we have to establish what the reasonable reporting area is," he said, referring to reporting crimes involving students in areas near but not on campus. "There is a balance between reporting and alarming."

The DOE handbook says that universities must report crimes that occurred "immediately adjacent to and accessible from the campus" and "crimes that occurred within the patrol jurisdiction of the campus police…" in their daily crime logs.

Harber said he was unaware of the requirement.

Currently, Police Services does not report crimes against students in their daily crime log if the incident was off campus or handled by the Memphis Police Department.

Police Services has an agreement with MPD that allows them to patrol a square block surrounding campus that includes areas where many students live.

The DOE's finding that U of M police failed to maintain an accurate, complete daily crime log has yet to be addressed by Police Services.  

Those asking for access to the crime log have been deferred to a book of incident reports.

When this was brought to Harber's attention, he let his employees know that in the future, the crime log needed to be provided instead of the book of incident reports.

As of Tuesday, the incident report book had not been updated in seven days.

In weeks prior to that, Daily Helmsman reporters seeking information on campus crime were told the book and online log had not been updated because the staffer responsible for doing so was off work that week.

The online log – not required by law – had no data for the month of November as of late Wednesday night.

What does this mean for students' safety?

A large number of students live in apartments or houses in the fraternity row area west of campus that includes Brister Street, Mynders Avenue, Midland Avenue, Walker Avenue and Watauga Avenue. A significant number of students also live in the area south of campus, on or near Spottswood Avenue.

University police have jurisdiction to patrol and make arrests in these areas. However, it is not campus property and, according to Harber, is of secondary concern to U of M Police Services. In the past month, more than 40 crimes were reported in this area.

"Sometimes, depending on what is going on on campus, we may be a little more focused here," Harber said. "It depends on the call load. But, we are in (that area) quite a bit on weekends."

Each year U of M students are sent an annual crime and safety report released by Police Services, as required by the Clery Act. According to data in the report, The U of M has long been one of the safest Universities in Tennessee.

The report is not required to include data about crimes that occur in neighborhoods directly adjacent to campus.

Jonathan Bennett, senior political science major, lives in Brister Oaks Apartments near fraternity row, where a series of burglaries occurred last year.

Many victims of the break-ins reported that their doors were unlocked at the time of the burglaries.