Dear Campus Community,
I want to share with you how your police department continues to keep campus safe and how you can play a role in your safety and in the safety of your fellow Terps.
Our officers continue to be proactive and responsive in their duties while serving and protecting our campus community. In 2018, we responded to over 75,000 calls for service, which include but are not limited to responding to calls, initiating traffic stops, conducting building checks across our campus community, responding to vehicle and building lockouts, investigating traffic accidents, and walking escorts.
We continue to see a decrease in crime on our campus, with the crime rate falling almost 38 percent in 2018. This is in addition to an almost 7 percent drop in crime the year before. This includes an almost 42 percent drop in theft, our most reported crime on campus. Burglary incidents continue to decrease over the ten-year span, with 11 reports made last year. Though there has been a decrease in reported crimes, we still need your help. Here are a few things you can do:
- Do not let others into your residential building or onto floors, stairwells, elevators, etc. unless you know them as residents of your building.
- Keep your room door locked, when you’re asleep, down the hall, in the bathroom, or visiting others in your building.
- Don’t leave your property unattended.
- If storing items inside a locker temporarily, use a lock to secure the locker.
- If you have a bicycle on campus, use a “U” type of lock and not a cable/chain lock to secure your property.
To see the crime trend for the past ten years and the decreasing trend of crime on our campus, click here.
The safety of our community is a community effort. All members of the University of Maryland community play a role in keeping campus safe. Recently, a female student alerted UMPD of an intruder that was entering rooms inside Hagerstown Hall in the middle of the night. Thanks to the quick reporting by our student, our officers were able to apprehend the intruder and charge him accordingly.
If you see something, say something to police immediately. Do not wait; the sooner you report, the sooner our officers can respond and address the situation.
As part of our ongoing commitment to your safety, and our continuous efforts to educate you on emergency preparedness, we encourage you to review our latest safety video, Responding to an Active Shooter. While there’s no reason to expect to face an active shooter situation while you’re here, being prepared and understanding widely accepted practices are the best ways to be safe.
You can call UMPD or text us from the UMD Guardian Safety App, which is available free in the app store. This is the only way you can text UMPD. This app also serves as a virtual walking escort service, automatically contacting UMPD if you do not arrive at your expected destination.
As always, we ask that you register your cell phone with UMD Alerts by visiting https://www.alert.umd.edu/ . You will receive text messages from UMPD in the event of an active emergency.
Working together we can achieve a common goal: a safe campus.
Go Terps!
David B. Mitchell
Chief of Police/ Director of Public Safety
University of Maryland Police Department