CUNY Colleges Accused of Hiding Crime Stats

Don't report this, bro!

An audit by the State Comptroller's Office has found that five CUNY colleges failed to report 73 percent of the felonies that occurred on their campuses, as required by law. The most ironic offender? John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which failed to report 19 of its 20 felonies.

John Jay administrators are also accused of keeping two sets of crime logs, one created two weeks before auditors arrived. But Robert Pignatello, who oversees public safety at John Jay, tells the Post it's all just a big misunderstanding, because some of the crimes were reported to the police and not the college, while others occurred off campus.

The other campus offenders were Queens College, Baruch, Hunter and Medgar Evers, which didn't report 78 out of the total 107 serious crimes that occurred during 2006 and 2007. Under the federal Clery Act, colleges receiving federal funds must prepare and publish crime statistics annually. CUNY spokesman Michael Arena says that when the university learned of the audit's preliminary findings, it immediately held a two-day training session for security directors. The scandal is reminiscent of last year's revelation that NYU artificially deflates campus crime stats by classifying 87% of its residence hall population as "off campus."

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By John Del Signore in News on September 22, 2009 2:00 PM

Comments [rss]

pointsguy

famdoc & stripe are BOTH wrong, so it's pretty obvious they're defending their alma mater.

stripe

What sort of students go to John Jay? 2/3rds women and its been identified as one of the highest hispanic enrollment colleges in the nation. Most go into service jobs, and not the police these days. Many are very young-- just out of high school and many are the first in their families to go to college. Its a great group of hardworking kids trying to get ahead.

pointsguy

Ever see what kind of students go to John Jay?

famdoc

@pointsguy:

Yeah...hard-working young people who want a quality education but may not have $50K like your mommy and daddy to send them to Harvard (where you obviously learned how to be fair, discerning and civil).

nmuva98

Your comment shows a common misconception about Harvard and other elite colleges. Schools like Harvard are actually quite a bit cheaper to attend than most lower-tier schools, including most of the non-elite state schools.

The larger the endowment of a school, the more money can be spent on scholarhips. If your parents makes less than $60,000 per year you can go to Harvard for free. I'm betting that John Jay does not have the same type of program....