Louisiana State University and Southern University have the highest college campus crime rates in Louisiana, according to FBI crime statistics for 2009 released this month.
 
LSU’s crime rates for 2009 were the highest they’ve been in five years. Property crime has increased by 20 percent, violent crime has tripled, and robbery has more than quadrupled.
 
While LSU crime rates are on the rise, rates at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, Nicholls State University and the University of New Orleans have decreased since 2005.
 
The crimes per capita for all five universities were compared between the years 2005 and 2009, using the head count reported by each school.
 
For 2009, the reported crimes per 1,000 students at Southern was 43, LSU was 40.3, ULM was 23.4, UNO was 15.9 and Nicholls was 10.2.
Sgt. Blake Tabor, LSUPD spokesman, said the numbers could be misleading.
 
“We could be the safest campus nine months out of the year, but the numbers wouldn’t reflect that,” Tabor said.
 
Tabor said it is important to look at how trends happen across the entire year.
 
“We may go nine months without having a robbery at all and then, for whatever reason, we’re still doing our policing in the identical way we’ve been doing, and due to situations beyond our control, we may have four, five or six that occur in a month,” he said. “Then it looks like we’re having a huge spike, but then we solve all six of them.”
 
It’s common for one person to be responsible for multiple offenses, Tabor said.
 
“Over the course of the last couple of years, we’ve had a few instances where it took us a while to catch a suspect, and he ended up burglarizing numerous vehicles, and then we make the arrest, and we’ll go several months or a good period of time where we don’t have any [crimes] at all,” he said.
 
Southern has consistently had the highest crime rates of all five universities each year with the exception of 2005.
 
Col. Terry Landry, interim police chief at Southern, said campus crime often reflects city crime.
 
“When universities are situated in major metropolitan areas and you have crime trends in the city, so goes the crime trends on campus,” Landry said.
 
According to FBI statistics for 2009, Baton Rouge had higher per capita crime rates than New Orleans in violent crime, robbery, aggravated assault, property crime, burglary and larceny-theft.
 
From 2008 to 2009 alone, Baton Rouge murders rose 12 percent, and violent crime increased by 5 percent in the metro area, which could explain why LSU and Southern had significant crime increases in the same year.
 
Tabor said a number of external factors contribute to LSU’s crime rates, including sporting events, student population, campus size and accessibility.
 
“Maybe in the criminal mind, we’re an easy target because we always have a large number of people on campus,” he said. “Perhaps they feel they can blend in a little bit better.”
 
The most frequent offenses at all of the five colleges were property crimes and larceny-thefts.
 
Tabor said students should pay more attention to their surroundings.
 
“There may be students coming from rural areas where they’re used to sleeping with their doors unlocked and leaving their cars unlocked,” he said. “That’s why we try to make such a push toward educating these students. You can’t leave your expensive belongings in plain sight — people are going to take them.”
 
ULM’s crimes per capita were similar to LSU’s from 2005 to 2007 but have decreased in recent years.
 
Larry Ellerman, ULM’s chief of police, said he attributes the campus’s low numbers to the quality of his officers.
 
“We pay aggressive attention to patrol functions and having a good presence,” Ellerman said. “It’s important to let the outside community know you’re there.”
 
Thomas Harrington, UNO police chief, attributes UNO’s relatively low reported crimes per capita to the visibility of the police officers and the campus’s high commuter rate.
 
“We only have two on-campus housing facilities right now,” he said. “The majority of people that come here commute, which probably has a whole lot to do with our crime rates being so low.”
 
Out of the five universities compared, Nicholls has managed to maintain the lowest crime rates during the past five years.
 
“I pride myself on that,” said Craig Jaccuzzo, Nicholls police chief. “We have a community policing type of philosophy.”
 
Jaccuzzo said the university is small enough where officers can match students’ names with faces.
 
“We try to have a continuous relationship with the student body,” he said.
 
But Jaccuzzo said the university’s effective policing has more to do with management rather than size.
 
“We investigate things early, and we follow up on every little case to prevent them from escalating,” he said. “We take all minor crimes and investigate them like felonies.”
 
Nicholls’ police department also employs student officers, Jaccuzzo said, who have the same authority as regular campus police minus the firearms.
 
“They get to patrol residence halls and academic buildings,” he said. “They can detain, identify and provide security. A lot of them are hired afterward to work for us full time.”
 
 
 
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Contact Sarah Eddington at [email protected]