CUNY Colleges Accused of Hiding Crime Stats

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."