NAMED NATIONAL FOUR-YEAR DAILY NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR FOR 2020-21 IN THE COLLEGE MEDIA ASSOCIATION’S PINNACLE AWARDS
Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023
Volume 160 No. 14 SERVING SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1934
WWW.SJSUNEWS.COM/SPARTAN_DAILY
UPD holds community discussion By Matthew Gonzalez STAFF WRITER
San Jose State’s University Police Department (UPD) held an open forum conversation in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library on Monday, discussing recent crime trends and answering questions from the SJSU community. UPD Chief Michael Carroll said the event focused on providing a space for people to see the work the UPD is doing while also being able to voice any concerns SJSU community members had. “We really thrive on trying to build relationships and foster wholesome relationships that can help us identify sustainable solutions to our campus safety,” Carroll said. UPD Capt. Frank Belcastro said a common theme he has seen with incidents on campus is the prolific presence of drugs, specifically crack. “It looks like crack is making an appearance again because this is the second case where we’ve gotten crack on an individual, so it looks like it’s coming back.” Belcastro said. Along with drugs, weapons are prevalent on campus, according to Belcastro. Belcastro said a laundry list of drugs was often accompanied by the possession of at least one gun, knife or other form of MATTHEW GONZALEZ | SPARTAN DAILY
UPD | Page 2
UPD Capt. Frank Belcastro speaks during an open forum conversation event at the MLK Library on Monday afternoon.
SJSU President talks campus safety occurring in the university community to try to reduce incidences. When I talk with other students, one of the questions I’ve been asking some students and I’ve been going to the various colleges and meeting with students so I met with some students in the science College of Sciences and I met with some students in engineering. Some of the things I was asking them specifically, is about communication. Do they feel they are getting the emergency alerts? Are they aware of what these methods mean? To help all of us build a community of safety, sort of say something? See something, do something because many, there’s many more students and they’re our staff and police. So we all need to be moving on this in the same direction. So those are the types of discussions I’ve been having with students, not just about safety, but about a number of things to help us all solve the problem together.
By Alina Ta
STAFF WRITER
Editor’s note: some answers have been edited for clarity and grammar. President Cynthia Teniente-Matson Do you have any plans to collaborate with UPD or any policy plans to reassure students that these issues will at least decrease over time? I don’t think there’s any one human being that could suggest that we have all the answers to how to decrease crime. If we did this problem would have been solved in the United States already, right? [. . .] Some of these issues are very common across university campuses across the United States. They tend to ebb and flow with the economy, sometimes with weather, sometimes with other localized issues in our community. I have met with Chief Carroll and I have talked with him about how we are helping to lift campus safety because I’ve heard from students that campus safety is always a concern. And they are addressing this by doing more Meet and Greet information[. . .] Recently I had an opportunity to speak with Mayor Mahan and one of his initiatives is to look at improving our statistics, meeting and lowering the incidences of crime in our city. [. . .] We’re the largest landholder in Downtown and we have the largest mass with 40,000 people that are here on any given day [. . .] So we’re talking about the potential for putting some meetings together
We talked about it last month, Michigan, just happened. The students ALEXIA FREDERICKSON | SPARTAN DAILY ARCHIVES do get notifications President Cynthia Teniente-Matson speaks about her goals and vision for the SJSU community about shootings that during a previous conversation with student media in her office in Clark Hall on Jan. 26. happen near campus. Do you have any response on Task Force style, between the What have you been talk to them about what their how students can feel safer on campus? city of San Jose, the sheriff, our learning from students? experiences were and wanted campus police, perhaps other entities of which they have large security forces that are also doing business in this region, to help put all of our best minds and efforts thinking about how we improve and ensure safety reduction of crime incidences as you’re referring to around the community.
What have you been hearing from students?
My second day on campus. I went over to the residence halls and participated in the orientation sessions with some of the orientation advisors, just a handful of the advice or not the orientation advisors, but the orientation employees, student employees, and the student RAS to talk with them about safety. And actually, they brought it up. I didn’t go to talk to them about safety. I went to
to introduce myself how I can help them and they brought up some of the conversations around safety. So I brought that back to Nina Chuang, our A.S. President to say, ‘What can we do more together to address some of these comments that are coming up?’ And we’ve also then followed up in a meeting with Chief Carroll. [. . .] He is putting a lot of effort and initiatives into what’s
We have active shooter training that comes through our police department. [. . .] We offer quite a bit of training to students on the runway. [. . .] Run Hide Fight training here to ensure students know what to do if they find themselves in that sort of situation. Our police department is a bit Q&A | Page 2