Reports of crimes that occur on campus are easier to find than ever before. The campus police department is remodeling its website to include updated crime logs.
The newly updated and renamed section of the campus police website, the Clery link, formerly named Reports and Statistics, provides more transparent and obtainable information about criminal activity and crime statistics reported annually and by incident.
The Clery Act is a federal law that requires colleges to provide timely information about criminal activity to the public. It was passed in 1990.
The act is named after Jeanne Clery, a college student who was killed in her dorm at Lehigh University in 1986.
The ACC police department faces staffing and budgetary restraints that make it difficult to finish this project quickly. "It's a work in progress," ACC Police Chief Frankie Waller said. "We are working on it as we have time."
The updated website includes information on crimes that have been reported on each campus, and when they occurred. It also includes annual reports that have always been available. In the past, the annual reports were posted back to 2000. Now they only go back to 2005.
"The police department was different then," Waller, who started in 2006, said.
According to the website, the last reported crime on campus was on Nov. 6, 2008, at the Pinnacle Campus.
Colleges have two business days to report crimes that fall into the categories that have to be reported or they can be fined up to $27,500 per offense by the U.S. Department of Education.
Under the Clery Act, seven major categories of crime need to be reported annually, and all reported crimes need to be listed in the daily logs. Criminal homicide, sex offenses, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and arson should all be reported. Liquor law violations, drug-related offences, and illigel weapons need to be reported if there is an arrest.
The act also states that the crimes should be broken down not only by campus, but by location on campus.
"The biggest concern I have with this new website is that the locations aren't specific. It's not enough to say that something happened somewhere on campus," Daniel Carter, the Director of Public Policy for Security on Campus, Inc. said of the updates on the ACC website.
Security on Campus, Inc. is a non-profit organization, founded by Jeanne Clery's parents, that offers training on Clery Act compliance, and works to prevent campus crime from going unreported.
The new website will make information easier to obtain, and help the school become more compliant with the Clery Act.
is a member of the 
Be the first to comment on this article!