True Picture of Crime

A college-age man boards a UConn bus and highjacks it at knifepoint.

Two UConn students are robbed of valuable jewelry at gunpoint outside their dormitory

A UConn student is charged with first-degree assault after allegedly stabbing a man during a fight.

A man with a knife forces a female student into his vehicle, drives off, then fondles her before releasing her unharmed.

These incident and others, all from the past 14 months, have raised the public profile of crime at UConn. In several cases, police issued crime alerts and the incidents were reported widely in the news media. They signal the changing nature and scale of crime at UConn.

UConn Police Chief Robert Hudd says he's seen the type and amount of crime grow in the 10 years that he's been chief.

"There was no police blotter in the paper 10 years ago because there was no need for one," Hudd said. "Any crime that happened was front page news."

Anyone can look at UConn's official crime statistics for the past three years on the police department's web site (http://www.police.uconn.edu/stoucr00.html). Called Uniform Crime Reports, they represent the official crime figures reported to the FBI each year and, under federal law, are made public by the university.

But the official figures only show the more serious types of crime and can overshadow the day-to-day crime that is more typical on this rural, sprawling campus with a population of 17,500 full-and part-time students.

A group of advanced journalism students spent the past three months looking at crime and security issues on campus and found:

* Alcohol fuels much of the crime at UConn, especially property damage in dorms, intimidation, simple assaults and disorderly conduct.

* Parking lots, especially the poorly lit and remote D-Lot, are easy targets for crime.

* More cases of sexual assault and hate crimes are being reported, but not necessarily to police.

It might seem surprising that many crime categories at UConn do not show an increase since 1996. In many categories, such as sexual assault and burglary, the number of crimes for 2000 were well below the average for the previous four years. However, there were increases in the most serious crimes in 2000 -- first-degree sexual assault, arson, armed robbery and aggravated assault.

Many crimes are not reflected in the UCR figures because they either do not constitute a "serious crime" or are not reported. For example, police say sexual assault is one of the most difficult crimes to deal with because victims are often reluctant to come forward. Police Chief Robert Hudd said that the department's figures on rape and sexual assault don't reflect the scale of the problem.

"Rape is probably grossly underreported," Hudd said. "It's difficult for the victim to deal with and difficult for them to report. We're not at a point in society where it doesn't have a negative connotation on the victim."

Another reason crime figures may not be accurate is because the resident assistants do not call the police for every crime, said Karen Poulin, judicial affairs coordinator for the Dean of Students Office.

"There is tons of drinking and drug use that either isn't found out or not reported to the police," she said.

Interviews with officials across campus indicate that much of the crime here is alcohol-related, especially in the dorms.

Janice Wilbur, substance abuse prevention coordinator at UConn's Heart House, said she believes that much of the serious crime on campus is fueled by alcohol.

"There's definitely a connection between alcohol, vandalism and violent behavior," Wilbur said.

Kathleen Holgerson, the director of the Women's Center, believes that one of the most dangerous places on campus may be the dorm room itself.

"Crime is happening where people live," she said. "Within your own dorm room .... when you go to the shower, propping doors open."

An analysis of incident reports from the UConn police from June 1999 to May 2001 shows that the majority of crime occurs in dormitories and in the most remote parking lots on campus.

The most crime-ridden dorm was North, with 210 reported incidents, or 10 percent of all crime reported on campus for that period. North also had one fourth of all crime in the dorms. (See related story).

Towers had the second highest amount of crime, with 112 incidences, followed by Northwest with 106 and Celeron with 87 incidents reported.

One of the biggest problems in the dorms is theft. Many students leave valuable items in their dorm room.

When Meghan Bard, a 5th- semester political science major, went home for Thanksgiving, she assumed that her laptop computer would be safe in her room on the 6th floor of Watson Hall in Alumni. However, when she returned from the holiday, the laptop was gone. Three others on her floor also returned to find their laptops missing and police are investigating the four thefts.

The experience was unsettling, said Bard "It's awful, you feel so violated. Somebody came into my room and took things. What if I had been there?" she said.

In all, various types of theft -- larceny, burglary, and thefts from buildings and motor vehicles -- totaled 660 incidents, about 32 percent of the total reported to police, the logs show.

"This is the same as any major city," Hudd said. "The only difference is this used to be the only crime on campus. We didn't used to have car theft, assault, rape or robbery, which worry me the most," he said.

In the University's 20 parking lots, 336 crimes were reported. The most crimes, 55, occurred in D-Lot, which represents more than 16 percent of all parking lot crimes. Most that the crime was vandalism and thefts, including vehicle theft. Twenty-two motor vehicles were reported stolen across campus over the two years.

Resident assistants, complex coordinators and hall directors who were interviewed also mentioned larceny and theft as the most common crimes in and around dorms.

"Many students don't think it's important to keep their doors locked," said Chuck Sundquist, who has been a hall director of the Alumni quadrangle for five years. "Some students have such a false sense of security that they went on the (TV) news and said that they don't lock their doors."

Such behavior is practically inviting thieves into dormitories, Sundquist added. He said that on a weekend, it is not unusual to receive two reports of students having items stolen in Alumni.

Some campus crime doesn't make it into the police reports and is handled by a campus judiciary board run by the Dean of Students. Poulin, the judicial affairs coordinator, said most cases she deals with involve alcohol and marijuana.

"Ninety-nine percent of the information I get is about driving under the influence, underage drinking and the possession of marijuana," Poulin said.

Gay Douglas, an assistant Dean of Students since 1993, sees vandalism as the most frequent crime on campus.

" It's an anonymous act. Students get intoxicated and break things," Douglas said. "Universities spend thousands a year fixing things that have been vandalized. People do it and don't think you'll find out."

In the two year's of incident reports from UConn police, vandalism appeared most often. There were 587 reported incidents, or 28 percent of all reported crime.

While vandalism is often the result of drinking, alcohol often figures in other crimes, several interviewees said. A person who has been drinking may commit a crime or is more likely to be a victim.

"Anytime a group of people are intoxicated, without deserving it, they open themselves to being prone to crime," said Poulin. "A person is more likely to be assaulted if they are drinking in Celeron or Carriage House rather than shopping at the Eastbrook mall. People have been taking advantage of drunk people forever."

Wilbur of UConn's Heart House recounted one recent incident where a first-semester student was attacked by a group of drunken men outside a local bar. All of them were drunk and the dispute was over a woman.

"They broke his nose and crushed his face and he lost 30 percent of his hearing because of it," she said.

"I'm concerned with the extreme amount of drinking on campus," said Wilbur. "It's not social drinking, it's not binge drinking. It's extreme drinking and it has an incredibly negative effect on the quality of campus life," Wilbur said.

Ben Collins, a 5th semester political science major, said he saw his drunken roommate assault a firemen who was trying to help him. The fireman had responded to a police call about a drunken student.

"The fireman tried to help my roommate down the steps and my roommate put his elbow up to get him off and hit the fireman in the mouth. He'd been drinking a lot, " Collins said. The roommate was charged with assault and sentenced to probation and community service, he said.

Liquor violations dropped steeply in 2000, the UCR figures show, but those numbers are deceiving. The yearly average of liquor violations from 1996 to 1999 was 63. In 2000, there were only 39 violations, a 39 percent decrease.

But Chief Hudd said the drop has more to do with staffing levels than fewer violations.

"When we have the same (number of) police officers working at all events, their time available (for liquor arrests) has declined," Hudd said. "That's why it looks like the number of alcohol offenses has gone down. There's not less of them, but we have less time to deal with them."

Sexual assaults can be another result of excessive drinking. Many university officials cited sexual assault as one of the most serious crimes on campus because of the effect on victims.

"That kind of crime has the capability to traumatize victims and the family and friends of the person who is targeted," said Irene Quong Conlon , director of the Office of Diversity and Equity.

Police reported six sexual assaults in 1996 and 1997, two in 1998, 10 in 1999 and four in 2000.

But as Chief Hudd noted, many cases reported to the women's center and counseling services are never reported to police and don't get counted in official crime figures.

Holgerson, the director of the Women's Center, said the center received 12 reports of sexual assault in August and September 2001. That figure is way up from the same period last year. Holgerson believes there have been more reports because there is more awareness.

Shante Powers, a 5th-semester student leader of the Violence Against Women Prevention Program, agrees. "I would like to think that there is more of a willingness to report (sexual assaults) but I'm not sure."

Joseph Giordano, a member of Kappa Sigma, holds mandatory sexual assault seminars with new pledges in conjunction with the Women's Center. Giordano agrees that the problem is worse than actually reported. Many people are unaware of the legal definition of sexual assault, he said, so they sometimes don't realize they have been assaulted.

Counseling services at UConn has noticed an increase in the past few years in the number of reports it has filled out regarding sexual assault or date rape, said JoAnne Lewis, the center's director since 1989.

"I don't know if it's increased or if people are just reporting it more," she said. "We've had more discussions about it; more students are talking about having been involved in incidents of date rape."

Lewis said that a rise in the number of sexual assaults could be attributed to the growing prevalence of Gamma Hydroxy Butyrate, otherwise known as GHB, the "date rape drug."

Hate crimes are among the list of growing crimes on campus, said Conlon , director of the diversity office since 1995. Conlon has been working with students at UConn since 1975.

"Over the years, I've heard more and seen more about hate crimes -- things like anti-gay slogans and people putting up swastikas," Conlon said. "I heard that one of our students started wearing his national flag on his shirt so he wouldn't be perceived as Arab after what happened on Sept. 11 -- I'm not sure if it's true but things like that worry me."

UConn's UCR figures show hate crimes dropping from 1998 to 2000. In 1998, there were nine reports, the most in the past five years. That figure dropped to six hate crimes in 1999 and three in 2000.

But as with sexual assaults, underreporting may distort the true level of hate crimes, several people said.

Most of those interviewed do not expect crime, especially violent crime, to decrease.

"Over the next few years, I think the violent aspect of criminal activity will continue to escalate," said Conlon. "I worry about peoples' lack of control and anger management and the seeming lack of concern about the impact of crime on other people."

Chief Hudd agrees that serious crime will probably continue at UConn.

"Armed and unarmed robberies will continue," Hudd said. "Everything that occurs everywhere else eventually comes to UConn."

(Reporters Luke Foster, Terry Nguyen and Chris Collibee contributed to this story.)