Thursday, November 14, 1996
PRIORITIES:
UCLA must make crime prevention measures a top priorityBy
Michelle N. Mimlitsch
The recent "Safety Alert" distributed by the UCPD in response to
a reported rape in Parking Lot 3 raises serious issues about campus
security that cannot be addressed simply by following the security
measures suggested at the conclusion of the memo.
While we all should, of course, do as much as we can to protect
ourselves from crime, it also falls upon the university to do as
much as it can to prevent crime from occurring, particularly when
the measures suggested for individual security are facile at best
and impossible to follow or dangerously ineffective at worst.
The safety alert reminds us, for example, to use the CSO
service. A very good idea, except for the fact that the reported
rape occurred at 3:00 p.m. Â the middle of the day, when CSOs
are not on call. The alert also recommends parking near a light
source, which is irrelevant in some lots for daytime security and
also avoids the fact that there must be light sources to park near
 and if there are dark areas in any of the parking
structures, it falls to the university to add sufficient lighting
so that we can all park in a well-lit area all the time.
A similar suggestion that we park near a door in the lot is
almost comical, for as we all know it is an option for only a very
few of us. Unless the university plans to add lots of additional
doors to all of the structures, better solutions to preventing
crime must be found.
The safety alert’s suggestions, while valuable in their small
way, cannot compensate for the university’s full commitment to
doing all it can to ensure the safety of everyone who uses our
campus facilities all day, every day. Rather than pushing the
responsibility for security onto potential victims, the university
must take steps to prevent another such daytime attack. Past campus
improvements such as better lighting and UCPD emergency call boxes
have been steps in the right direction, as would be any lighting
added to dark areas in campus parking structures.
But these are not enough: human intervention is also necessary.
This could come in the form of an expanded, daytime CSO service,
or, less expensively, by the placement of patrolling officers
 either UCPD or CSO  in every lot during the daytime
hours when escort services are not available. If Parking Services
can afford to patrol so effectively to prevent illegal parking on
campus, university security organizations should be able to patrol
to prevent harm to people. Crime prevention may not bring in the
revenue ticketing does, but which is really more important after
all?