The Inter-Community Council met last night to discuss “Safety and Security at Duke” with guest speakers Kemel Dawkins, vice president for campus services, and Maj. Phyllis Cooper of the Duke University Police Department. The dialogue between student leaders and administrators addressed recent incidents at Café Parizade, police-student interaction and crime prevention.
The meeting began with presentations by Dawkins and Cooper about how the University is addressing campus safety concerns in light of the recent series of armed robberies. “We are working to double the police presence on campus as we continue to analyze the broad set of safety issues facing the Duke community,” Dawkins said.
Dawkins and Cooper highlighted the fact that Campus Services and DUPD worked throughout the summer with senior administrators to prevent crime during the fall semester, extending police patrol to areas adjacent to campus and pairing Duke patrols with Durham Police Department officers to facilitate cooperation.
The success of the joint patrol, however, was questioned by members at the meeting, especially in light of a recent incident at Parizade when patrons expressed outrage at the what they considered excessive police force outside a party thrown by Omega Psi Phi, a fraternity at the historically black North Carolina Central University. Cooper said an off-duty DPD officer was called by the owner of Parizade to disperse a crowd, and then his message was allegedly miscommunicated to the dispatcher as a request for officer assistance.
“We are currently sharing responsibility and jurisdiction over a variety of places. We are trying to work out that relationship with the Durham Police over time,” Dawkins said.
A concern that ICC members repeatedly raised was the fact that students do not feel safe on campus. “Given a campus the size of ours, having a force patrol and being visible at the same time is a difficult challenge,” Dawkins said. Although Dawkins and Cooper emphasized plans to build up a larger permanent security staff and increase officer training, there is no definite date for when the new forces will be deployed.
Dawkins and Cooper emphasized the fact that the number of aggressive assaults on campus over the past few years have been relatively constant. The armed robberies of the past month, Dawkins said, were somewhat atypical. “I don’t know if this is an anomaly or if this is a new paradigm,” Dawkins said. “But we are treating this as though it were a new paradigm.”
Jesse Longoria, DSG vice president for athletics and campus services, raised the issue of funding for student-proposed initiatives such as a walking escort service and better lighting on Central Campus—proposals Dawkins said he supported. “The administration simply has to put the highest priority on initiatives that will yield the most immediate and dramatic results,” Dawkins said.
Dawkins and Cooper asked the student leaders to remind their constituents to be alert to suspicious activities, to not hesitate to use blue light emergency phones and to walk in pairs. Dawkins said he would work to create a more systematic protocol for alerting the Duke community to crimes as well. “We are looking put a more robust internal communications system in place with the Duke Police,” he said.
The ICC members present at the meeting generally agreed that the dialogue was productive and will facilitate further policy recommendations. “I think it was very important that we were able to present a united front to the administration. Students don’t feel as safe on campus as they should,” Longoria said. “Hopefully this opens the door for producing tangible results in the very near future.”
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