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Crime at Harvard’s Longwood Medical Campus
Background: Responding to pressure from management at Harvard’s Cambridge campus, the university’s vice president for police and security diverted all but two of the Harvard University Police Department’s patrol officers from Longwood to Cambridge last fall.
On November 25, a Harvard University student or affiliate was robbed at gunpoint close to the Brigham Circle station.
On January 26, we brought the escalating security problems at Longwood to the notice of Sachin Jain (MD ’06), the president of the Harvard Medical School student council. Jain promptly sent out an e-mail questionnaire to all HMS students so that interested parties could lobby for the appropriate level of security staffing at specific locations. The results of the survey have not yet been published.
On Monday, February 16, our Research Associates went to Longwood and distributed over a hundred informational flyers to students and staff, warning that “Harvard security has gaps.… Pressure for a greater police presence on Harvard’s central campus has caused officials to place only one patrol car near the Harvard Medical School.”
Later the same day, an eighteen-year-old pharmacy employee was stabbed and killed by a thief on the sidewalk a block west of the Medical School Quadrangle.
Two years before the stabbing, the same thief had robbed a woman at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, immediately adjacent to the Quadrangle. A year later, on March 12, 2003, a different thief had robbed a Harvard University affiliate at gunpoint on the sidewalk half a block west of the Quadrangle — around the corner from where the CVS employee was later stabbed.
A total of 42 robberies were reported at the Longwood Medical Campus in 2002, all on “public property.”
The US Department of Education defines “public property” as the public streets, paths, sidewalks, and parking facilities that lie either within the campus or immediately adjacent to the campus.
If Harvard were recording and publishing its crime data precisely as required by the ED, we could be confident about comparing them to other universities’. But Harvard, like a few other schools, deliberately overreports by including a greater area than that specified by the definition. We consider it improbable that any reputable university would overreport data by more than 100%. Consequently, we can discount Harvard’s published data by no more than 50%.
If Harvard did overreport more extensively, it would be invalidating the usefulness both of its own data and of comparison schools’ data. Whatever the University’s rationale, this would prevent the Department of Education from accomplishing a major goal of the 1998 amendment to the Higher Education Act.
To make useful comparisons of crime rates, we require an estimated value of the public-property crime at each school. In Harvard’s case, we can reasonably conclude that in 2002 a minimum of 21 robberies happened either within the campus or immediately adjacent to the campus.
Data published in the university’s Public Police Log indicate that the volume of robberies reported directly to the HUPD has subsequently increased.
With the reduction in police presence at Longwood, the medical school may be acquiring a reputation as a “soft target” for thieves.
What remedies should management at the Medical School consider? We have four recommendations that could be promptly implemented with a minimum of controversy:
- Increase the number of patrol officers from 2 to 4.
- Increase the number of security guards.
- Initiate frequent foot patrols by security guards.
- Initiate bicycle patrols by either police officers or security guards.
The availability of financial resources does have to be considered. The total budget of the schools on the Longwood campus ($0.63 billion) divided by the total budget of the schools and allied institutions on the Cambridge campus ($1.95 billion) yields a ratio of 1.0:3.1. See “Departmental Operating Expenses,” <http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/budget/factbook/current_facts/op_expense_35.html>. A total of 6 “HUPD Teams” are currently employed at Harvard University. Presumably a minimum of 2 patrol officers are assigned to each team, amounting a total of 12 patrol officers.
If the Longwood schools were spending the same proportion of their budgets on patrol officers as the Cambridge schools are, they would presumably be assigned a minimum of 12.0/3.1 = 3.9 patrol officers.
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Published by the Student-Alumni Committee on Institutional Security Policy. General Editor: James Herms
Last updated 04/09/2004. Permissions. http://www.stalcommpol.org/Longwood.html