2015 Cleary Report shows slight differences to 2014 Uniform Crime Report stats.
By Kyle R. Cotton
kcotton11@student.alamo.edu
Courtesy Photo
Weekly crime emails from Alamo Colleges police do not paint a complete picture of crime on the five campuses, a public relations official at this college told KABB Fox 29 San Antonio in a news report Sept. 16.
The station aired a statement from PR Director Vanessa Torres for a segment following up on The Ranger’s Sept. 14 story about crime at Tobin Lofts.
Torres told KABB she is verifying crime statistics with district police.
“The weekly email was created in order to keep the Alamo Colleges’ community informed but does not serve as an official or comprehensive report of crime,” Torres said in the statement.
Torres told The Ranger Sept. 22 she made the statement because KABB needed to run the story for their nightly news.
Torres said she is verifying the weekly crime report numbers that The Ranger compared to the 2014 Cleary Report for all campuses, including the first two months at Tobin Lofts, which opened in November 2013.
The Cleary Report is required by the Cleary Act, which is part of Title 9, legislation designed to prevent sexual or gender discrimination at educational institutions.
Tobin Lofts was compared to the district police department’s Uniform Crime Report statistics, because the 2014 Cleary Report only covers crime statistics from 2011-2013.
The Ranger requested the statistics for Tobin Lofts and its parking garage from district police to have a full year to compare the compiled 2015 weekly crime reports.
Torres said she wants an “apples to apples” comparison before making a statement and wasn’t certain how The Ranger calculated the crime stats.
The 2015 Cleary Report — which includes crime statistics for 2014 — and the Ranger comparison of the 2014 UCR for Tobin Lofts have slight differences.
The 2015 Cleary Report reveals 34 reported crimes at Tobin Lofts. That does not include 10 reported crimes in the Tobin parking garage, which is considered to be crime reported on this campus.
Subtracting the Tobin parking garage crime stats from the Tobin Lofts total, the report statistics and the 2015 Cleary Report match with slight differences in categorization between theft and burglary.
Police Chief Don Adams told The Ranger the week before Labor Day that numbers from the weekly crime reports might change by the time district police file the annual Cleary Report.
He said sometimes crimes that were initially reported are investigated and it turns out to be nothing, or the person who reported recanted their initial statements.
Adams gave an example of a female student who reported a sexual assault causing police to issue a crime alert as part of the Cleary Act, but later that year she recanted.
Adams could not be reached for comment on the KABB Fox 29 report.
In her statement to KABB, Torres said, “San Antonio College is committed to ensuring that Tobin Lofts remains an inviting and safe community for all its residents.”
Local station WOAI, who is in the same building as KABB also followed up with reports on the crime story.
