<p>These articles seems to indicate it's a pretty serious problem:</p>
<p>Tulane</a> students are asking the university for beefed up patrols | NOLA.com</p>
<p>Tulane</a> Increases Security After Student Outcry - New Orleans News Story - WDSU New Orleans</p>
<p>Hopefully you saw this thread that has been ongoing: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tulane-university/1271686-tupd-its-not-enough.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tulane-university/1271686-tupd-its-not-enough.html</a></p>
<p>I have to say that I think Tulane’s response has been strong. I think they realized that they had not been attentive enough (to give them a bit of a break they did just get a new head of the Tulane Police starting this semester, and to his credit he saw the issues involved and started his job a week early to meet with the Tulane community and the New Orleans authorities to create action plans and implementation) and the student activism has seemed to really get things going. Kudos to the students for their mature and energetic approach to the issue.</p>
<p>It appears many very positive steps have been taken, including a lot of new and repaired lighting (a process that continues), new emergency applications for smart phones, as well as a new system of GPS trackers for the Shuttle so that students can wait in a safe location until it is with a few seconds of arriving, additional personnel (off duty NOPD on Thursday-Sunday evenings, with possible plans to extend this further), creating safe zones that are patrolled even more rigorously which gives the students defined paths from campus to the most popular off-campus locations, expansion of the areas patrolled off campus, and more alerts when crime does occur. I think this is a fairly strong response in a few short weeks, and hopefully there will be even more. Only time can tell if this truly “fixes” the problem.</p>
<p>However, let’s also be clear that this recent uptick in crime around campus follows a few years of a much safer environment than many other urban campuses. While the crime is worrisome, it is not really unusually high for a city campus. It was unusually low before, which was great! The trick is to jump on it before it gets worse, and to make it better, like it was. I think Tulane is dedicated to making sure this is the case. I am definitely not trying to minimize the issue, I have a D that will be living off campus (although quite close) in the fall when she returns from studying abroad, loves walking down St. Charles all the way to the public library on weekends as well as to the areas on South Carrollton, Maple, etc. So I have as much at stake as any of us. I just think we should keep it in perspective and not make it sound like all of the sudden uptown is overrun with violent crime. That is definitely not the case. Having said that, some of the criminal acts have been rather brazen and could be stopped with proper measures. Hopefully those measures are the ones being taken. Like I said, only time can tell us that.</p>
<p>“At least 14 students were robbed – some at gunpoint – in the area around campus last semester, an increase of almost 75 percent from each of the past four semesters. In addition to the spike in armed robberies, two women recently were raped just blocks from campus”
My son is a Tulane junior and now lives off campus, a couple of blocks from the school. I am on the Tulane PD listserv for the crime notifications and get an email from the school each time there is a serious crime (which, to their credit, they provide voluntarily). The increase in crime from his first two years at the school has been shocking and as you can all well imagine is enough to keep a parent up worrying all night long. Yesterday I had a long discussion with Capt Noble from the TUPD and she outlined for me the various security measures being undertaken to protect the students. I also spoke to the director of student services there, who reviewed much of the same info as Capt Noble. ( by the way, She told me that the broken streelights mentioned here have been fixed). Yes, the students are rallying to get more security, but the parents, who send their kids to Tulane need to pressure the administration their as well. The area surrounding the school is the jurisdiction of TUPD - WE pay their salaries, we have a reasonable expectation to believe that they are protecting our children and doing whatever it takes to make the area safe. There was an armed robbery on my sons block the day before yesterday - at 9pm. Two males, walking from their front door to their car were held up. It’s not drunken kids wandering around alone at night at all, many of these crimes occur during evening hours when PLENTY Of kids are walking around. . Another kids was robbed at gunpoint while taking out his garbage, early evening. All of the crimes are listed on the PD website - check it out. The students are clearly easy targets and any thug with a gun taking a stroll around the university area is sure to find a kid to hit up within minutes. I believe they should set up “sting” operations and make some arrests so that word gets out to the criminal element that the easy pickings around the school has ended. Besides educating my son (repeatedly, the poor kid is sick of hearing it) about safety, and not fighting back if someone has a gun, etc I don’t know what else I can do besides continue to pressure the school to deal with this. I know that there has been a tremendous increase in violent crime in NO in general, it was just named as the city with the highest murder rate per capita, so I suppose that to the Mayor, armed robberies of affluent college kids uptown might not demand the urgency that I feel it does, but I am going to write to him anyway. Tulane is a large employer in NO and the student body there brings in a tremendous amount of $$ to the city so maybe they will have a vested interest…</p>
<p>I certainly agree with your post, although I believe the area around the university is the joint responsibility of TUPD and NOPD. I think the idea of sting operations is good, although I am no expert in how effective this might actually be. Remember, although 14 seems like a high number (and like I said in my post, while it is a 75% increase that means the number the previous semesters was quite low), over the course of a semester, which is approximately 120 days, that is 1 robbery every 9 days, more or less. Again, not trying to minimize the problem or make excuses for TUPD, Tulane, or NOPD, just trying to keep it in perspective. Also, while the 2 women getting raped is obviously terrible, they were from out of town, and it was at 2 or 3 in the morning on a poorly lit deserted street the night of the national football championship, behavior Tulane students are firmly taught to avoid.</p>
<p>Tulane is, in fact, the LARGEST private employer in New Orleans, and represent a crucial economic lynchpin to the city. I think it is fair to say that without Tulane coming back as strongly as it has, New Orleans would very possibly have not recovered from Katrina nearly as well as it has, and quite possibly not at all in many respects. So there is indeed a vested interest and while you are correct that the NOLA administration has its hands full with many problems, if Uptown and Tulane suffer the city will be irreparably damaged. So in fact they better feel the urgency, because as goes Uptown so goes the city.</p>
<p>New Orleans is by far one of the most dangerous cities in the US</p>
<p>[Crime</a> still dogs New Orleans ? USATODAY.com](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-12-29/new-orleans-murder-rate-violence/52275788/1]Crime”>http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-12-29/new-orleans-murder-rate-violence/52275788/1)</p>
<p>As of Thursday, police had counted 197 murders in the city — well above last year’s tally of 175. The murder rate last year was 51 per 100,000 residents — 10 times the national average and five times larger than other similar-size cities, according to New Orleans Police statistics. This year’s rate promises to be even higher.</p>
<p>Kayf - Yes, but that is irrelevant. Sorry, but those of us that are long time posters here are really tired of people talking about the rate of crime in New Orleans as if it had anything to do with the rate of crime around Tulane. It doesn’t. As a parallel example, East St. Louis, one of the most dangerous places in America for decades, is about the same distance from WUSTL as the really high crime areas in New Orleans are from Tulane. And add to that North St. Louis, which is even closer and nearly as dangerous. So what? It has nothing to do with anything that happens around WUSTL.</p>
<p>One has to look at the local crime maps and take into account where one should never go, as well as using common sense. Sticking with the WUSTL example, Forest Park is right across from WUSTL, much like Audubon Park is from Tulane. One would have to be an idiot to go walking through Forest Park alone after dark, but it is relatively safe during the day and there is tons to do there.</p>
<p>So please, let’s quit using the general statistics for New Orleans as if every section of the city is the same. Yes, the Uptown area was experiencing a real uptick for about a semester or so. Now they are addressing it, and already things seem better, although certainly it is too soon to say much.</p>
<p>Kayf- just to clarify, the 197 killings were from 2011, not year- to-date 2012.</p>
<p>Totally agree with fallenchemist.</p>
<p>Thanks jym. Just to further enhance the point of citing only relevant stats and not hyperbolic ones: kayf particularly brings up the murder rate. Yet when searching the crime map provided by <a href=“http://www.nola.com%5B/url%5D”>www.nola.com</a>, which is a nice one because you can search by parish (Orleans) and date (January 1, 2011 to now), one sees that in fact there are no homicides in the immediate Tulane area, and only 3 in what is generally regarded as the Uptown area (these 3 being in the eastern part of the Garden District, some 30 blocks from Tulane).</p>
<p>As has been said many times, and is well known, most homicides are gang and drug related, and this puts them in areas Tulane students are told from the start not to go to unless part of a group or school sponsored activity. Obviously random violence can occur anywhere, in any city. We all would prefer if New Orleans crime were far less than it is, and that there was no crime Uptown at all. But that is not realistic, and I can honestly say I would have the same concerns if my D were at U Chicago, USC, BU, Penn, Columbia, and so on and so forth. Actually, I feel she is in a somewhat safer immediate area than many of these schools. We all have anxiety about our kids when they are away, it is nearly unavoidable. We can only prepare them to be as vigilant as possible, give them whatever tools are available to enhance their safety, and stay on Tulane to keep implementing measures to improve the situation. That would be true no matter what school we were talking about, in any environment.</p>