Nearly 150 criminal offenses and disciplinary referrals occurred in 2005, according to the annual campus security report released by the Department of Public Safety last month.
The report summarizes the criminal offenses and disciplinary referrals involving members of the Brown community both on and off campus for the 2003, 2004 and 2005 calendar years.
Crime levels in 2005 were similar to levels in the previous few years, said DPS Chief of Police Mark Porter. "There is nothing really surprising about what the numbers show us," he told The Herald.
There were no reported murders or sexual offenses in the 2005 calendar year, which is consistent with other years, according to the report. The one case of aggravated assault and four cases of motor vehicle theft in 2005 are also in line with previous years' levels.
On-campus burglary rates dropped substantially, from 40 in 2004 to 16 in 2005. This decrease can be attributed to a shift in DPS' reporting procedures, Porter said. This year, DPS found many of the crimes reported as burglaries in previous years should have been classified as larcenies, less severe offenses that are not included in the report.
"This is responsible for a large percentage of the decrease (in burglaries)," Porter said.
The report also provided statistics for hate crimes committed at Brown. The report breaks hate crimes into two categories: reportable, which involve violence or sexual assault, and non-reportable, which involve intimidation and vandalism.
There was one reportable hate crime last year, involving sexual orientation and an assault on public property. Thirteen non-reportable hate crimes occurred in 2005, two of which the report describes as involving race, seven involving sexual orientation and two involving ethnicity.
The report also summarized the number of arrests and disciplinary referrals for drug, alcohol and weapons violations. A student found to violate University policy in any of these cases is referred to the Office of Student Life and faces disciplinary action ranging from reprimands to fines, permanent record notation or suspension, according to the report.
While there were no arrests for these violations in 2005, there were 103 alcohol-related disciplinary referrals, which is in line with numbers from the last five years.
There were 11 referrals for weapons violations last year.
Nine referrals were given for drug policy violations in 2005, compared to eight in 2004 and 108 in 2003. Porter declined to comment on the sharp drop in drug-related referrals or any of the disciplinary referral figures.
The report was prepared in accordance with the Clery Act, a federal law that applies to all colleges and universities using federal financial aid awards, including Pell Grants, Stafford Loans and Perkins Loans. The law mandates that schools prepare an annual report that includes three years of selected crime statistics for the school grounds and the surrounding area.
Overall, "(DPS) is pleased with what we see as a stabilizing and steady decline (of crime) in certain categories," Porter said.
The department increased public safety patrols during certain hours of the day in the beginning of the year, to "start off the semester in a good fashion and increase the visibility of DPS," Porter said.
