Crime at UNF has increased over the past year according to UNFPD’s CLERY annual safety report. There were a total of 25 crimes in 2016. That’s more than the last two years, with 2015 having 16 crimes and 2014 having 23 crimes. These crimes include robbery, assault, arson, and rape to name a few.

“It must meet the elements of all those crimes before it is counted, and it’s not as simple as it seems,“ UNFPD Chief Francis Mackesy said. “The CLERY gives you a pretty good snapshot of what’s happening on campus.”

The university has seen an increase in the numbers of rapes on campus. The amount of rapes this past year was the most the campus has seen in the past two years. This year there were five rape cases compared to the two cases in 2015 and four cases in 2014.

The report also states there have been six total crimes that dealt with domestic or dating violence, otherwise known as VAWA crimes this year, compared to five from last year and seven in 2014.

For the first time in the past two years, the report stated there were four unfounded VAWA crimes, which means that UNFPD were able to either prove the crime occurred off campus or it didn’t happen at all. CLERY stats requires that officers only count crime that occur on campus.

There was also a high number of motor vehicle thefts on campus. This past year the report states there were five cases compared to the three total cases of the past two years combined.

The report also states two cases of fondling and aggravated assault this past year; as well as, one robbery.

This year also reported one hate crime regarding sexual orientation. The last hate crime reported was in 2014, also regarding gender identity according to the safety report.

However, the university has also seen a steady decrease in the number of burglaries in the past couple of years with only three occurring this past year. It has also yet to see a murder, negligent manslaughter, incest or statutory rape in the past three years.

There was a decrease in the number of fires on campus from two to one. Last year, the only fire on campus was at a kitchen in the Osprey Village during the beginning of the year.

The report states that the number of arrests and conduct referrals have overall decreased substantially. In 2015, there were a total number of 404 arrests and conduct referrals, but this year this number has decreased to 289. These arrests and referrals are with any illegal activities regarding alcohol, drugs and illegal weapons.  

The CLERY reportable crimes, which is the statistics all students receives through e-mail, only counts the categories of crime that appear on the report. So, the total amount of crime on campus could be higher than what the stats say, which is why the number of arrests and conduct referrals are a lot higher than the number of crimes.

“Not every police report gets counted,” Mackesy said. “We only report what is required.”

There is also a nation-wide report called the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR), which has different standards as to what counts as a crime. These different standards can cause discrepancies that make each report state a different amount of a particular crime.

For example, the UCR requires everything be known when it comes to sexual assault, so it doesn’t count the cases where the victim chooses to not get police involved. On the other hand, CLERY doesn’t require the identity of the victim to be known, so it counts those cases. So, the CLERY stats would state a higher amount of sexual assault cases than UCR due to that different standard.

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