As crime continues within our communities, the University of Michigan – Flint invests in addressing issues at the root causes by partnering with external agencies and working with students.
“You can’t arrest your way out of some of these issues,” Ray Hall, Director of Public Safety, said.
The Department of Public Safety at UM-Flint has partnered with the Flint Police Department, Sheriff’s Department and a number of other agencies including Mott Community College (M.C.C). They host monthly meetings, where agencies share information amongst each other. Such as patterns of alarming behavior and patterns of crime.
“Our philosophy is problem oriented policing strategy that calls for an intervention strategy looking at the drivers of crime. The whole idea is that we use our partnerships and we fit the intervention strategy to the individual. In other words, we don’t do a broad brush approach.” Hall said.
Students are provided with multiple departments to help prevent any issues or concerns they or another student may be facing. One of which is the Campus Assessment Response and Evaluation Team, also known as the CARE Team. Meeting every Tuesday, the team handles all CARE reports being filed by students and staff. They assess the risk and respond to the threat by providing resources or intervention.
“As far as prevention goes, the earlier the better. Let’s say a student is having issues all across the board. We want all faculty to report it because the more information we have coming in we can prevent it. If you see something, say something. If somebody reports it early enough, we can get an intervention or get that student connected to the resources that they need. So that it doesn’t escalate,” Suzanne Cranum, assistant vice chancellor for health and well-being, said.
Hall also credits campus safety to the students having each other’s backs and reporting suspicious activities. “If you see something, say something… I’m out here, so give us a call. Even if you don’t want to leave your name or your number, and if you don’t want to be involved. I get it 100 percent. I’d love for you to leave your information, but if you don’t want to, don’t, just tell us what’s going on and we’ll get there and we’ll take care of it.” Hall said.
Rylie Yeiter is a writer for the Michigan Times and can be reached at jasobii@umich.edu.
