Police Log To Go Online

The Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) this week added new features to its public police log in an effort to improve the dissemination of information about crime.

The log, which until this past Sunday was e-mailed weekly to subscribers, will now be updated daily, Monday through Friday, on HUPD’s website and will be available to the general public.

HUPD spokesperson Steven G. Catalano said the decision to change the method by which the log is made public stemmed from internal discussions and did not include any change in the actual content of the log.

“We have always created a daily log, but it was only on the [HUPD] front desk,” Catalano said, referring to the printed log available at HUPD’s offices located at 1033 Mass. Ave. “We just decided to now put the daily log on the website.”

In a second change, the public logs will now include the times when incidents take place, in addition to the times when they are reported to HUPD. Previously, the log listed only the times at which HUPD was called, creating ambiguity in the log for incidents that were reported hours after they took place.

Catalano said the decision to add the time of occurrence stemmed from a recommendation by Daniel Carter, the senior vice president of Security On Campus Inc., a non-profit organization committed to increasing campus safety at universities.

“It was brought to our attention that there were some formatting issues with our log, and we addressed them,” Catalano said. “Now we put in when a crime is reported to us and then when it occurred if it didn’t happen at the same time.”

Carter said that he met with HUPD about adding the time of occurrence to the log in July in compliance with the Jeanne Clery Act.

“The Federal Clery Act requires that institutions report the actual date, time and general location of each offense reported,” Carter said. “Without this information students have no idea when crimes are actually happening or where.”

Carter said that after meeting with HUPD, they agreed to make the necessary changes to comply with the law.

“We were pleased that the HUPD was receptive to making this critically important revision to their crime log format and are encouraged by that commitment,” Carter said.

Although a new log will be published on a daily basis with the previous day’s reports, Catalano said that the online log will not include updates on previous entries of the log.

“Updates are only reflected in the log on the front desk,” Catalano said.

According to an e-mail sent by HUPD to weekly log subscribers, HUPD will try to have each day’s log posted by 1 p.m.

Catalano said the changes were entirely independent of the recommendations made earlier this summer by a University advisory group investigating Harvard’s policies on releasing campus crime information publicly.

A report released by the advisory group on June 2 called for an increase in the amount and detail of information in HUPD’s public police log.

Catalano said that while HUPD has taken the recommendation into consideration, the changes made to the log this past week were not a result of the advisory group’s report and mark no expansion in content.

“We felt that [the advisory group’s] request was legitimate and whenever possible we will prove more detailed information in the narrative,” Catalano said. “But we are not going to infringe on somebody’s privacy rights.”

Scott F. Goldman ’04-’05—who served as the Undergraduate Council representative on the advisory group and co-authored an addendum to the group’s final report criticizing the procedures of the committee and the content of the final report—said that while he sees the changes to the log as positive steps forward, he would still like to see more changes made.

“They definitely make sense as good changes, and if they were related to the committee they would be good first steps,” Goldman said. “If this is the end of it then this would be kind of disappointing to the committee. I definitely got some impression that content would be beefed up a little.”

While Catalano did not indicate that specific content changes had been made to the logs, he said that HUPD has made every effort to give the public as much information as possible.

The log can be viewed at www.hupd.harvard.edu/public_log.php.

—Staff Writer Evan M. Vittor can be reached at evittor@fas.harvard.edu.