Resolutions We'd Like To See

Florida campus cops vowing to...gasp...solve a crime:

FLORIDA - In the year since a Florida Atlantic University student and a friend were found dead of a drug overdose in a dorm room, university police have interviewed potential witnesses, searched the room and chased down leads. But they have made no arrest in the high-profile case.

The 38-officer department last year closed out and made arrests in 21 cases of rape, assault, robbery, burglary and theft — a fraction of the 279 crimes reported in the same categories last year, according to Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Officers cleared 107 crimes in the same categories in the past five years, compared with 1,586 in the same period.

The record of solving crime for the FAU police force, troubled by sex scandals and turnover at the top in recent years, is no worse than many other university police departments, but it lags behind similar-sized municipal police departments.

FAU police and university crime experts said solving crime on campus is harder than in cities. Detective bureaus are relatively small, so it often falls on patrol officers to act as investigators, crime technicians and evidence gatherers, they said. Police have to investigate more burglary and theft cases because university policies generally require those crimes be reported. There are fewer rashes of crimes, leading to less evidence to be collected for investigations.

FAU’s crime clearance percentage — arrests and closed cases as a percentage of reported crimes — was 7 percent last year, the FDLE reported. That was higher than the 2 percent clearance at Florida International University and lower than the 11 percent at the University of Florida.

The clearance percentage is commonly used as a gauge of a police department’s ability to solve crime, though it is intended to be a crime trend measure.

FAU has fared much worse than other, similar-sized Palm Beach County police departments.

The 31-officer Lantana Police Department had a 23 clearance percentage last year, the 53-officer Greenacres department recorded 20 percent and the 32-officer North Palm Beach department had a 20 percent clearance percentage. Countywide, the clearance rate was 18 percent."

Cutting through the bullshit time: College kids are smarter than the average criminal on the street so an 11% clearance rate is about all one can expect.

On college campuses, crime pays. Bigtime.