The University of Rhode Island Police Department (URIPD) has released its 2020 Clery Act Report, revealing a decrease in student alcohol referrals, a small number of student arrests and a new thieving social media trend.
The Clery Act Report discloses crimes related to the URI student body both on and off URI’s five campuses during the year.
The information in the Clery Act Report is obtained from dispatch logs recorded and kept by URIPD. This information is stored in their criminal record management systems (CRMS), where it is tabulated and input into the report by Lt. Paul Ricci.
The 2020 academic year saw three student arrests on the Kingston campus, one on weapons charges and the other two in relation to drug offenses.
The student arrested for possession of a prohibited weapon involved one student threatening one or more people with a blade over 3.5 inches after being asked to leave a get-together in a dorm building. According to Rhode Island laws, it is illegal to conceal a blade of more than 3 inches in Rhode Island. It is legal to openly carry a blade of any length unless one has the intent to use it “unlawfully against another.”
Both drug-related arrests were for possession of marijuana, though in one of the instances, the student was in possession of edibles and more than an ounce of cannabis packaged for sale. The other student possessed more than one ounce of cannabis.
A non-student was also arrested for disorderly conduct while allegedly being intoxicated on Butterfield Road on Oct. 3.
The URIPD does not only deal with crimes though. According to Ricci, they often deal with other “hazardous incidents” such as a chemical spill that took place on Sept. 5.
“[An employee from URI’s landscaping company] actually had a [Bobcat utility vehicle] with a brush cutter so the hydraulic line broke and it spilled about five gallons of fluid onto Plains Road,” Ricci said. “But that is considered a hazardous material, so they cleaned it, and Safety and Risk checked the area and removed any contaminated waste to ensure that everything was fine and no one was hurt.”
Over the course of 2020, there were several major medical emergencies, five reported instances of sexual assault, one instance of vandalism, 514 on-campus disciplinary referrals for the consumption/possession of alcohol, four burglaries within residence halls and a series of ‘devious licks’ throughout campus.
Despite the seemingly large number of 514 alcohol referrals, Ricci and Jagoda both said that these numbers are “way down” from previously recorded years. The 2019 Clery Act Report showed 607 alcohol-based referrals.
In addition to the five reported instances of sexual assault, there was three Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) offenses involving stalking and dating violence.
Only three students were mentioned to have committed crimes on the Providence campus, including a reported burglary and two motor vehicle thefts. They were all handled through the Providence Police Department.
URI’s other campuses, Narragansett Bay, W. Alton Jones and the Endeavor, did not see any reported crimes during this period of time.
Two fire instances were reported for the 2020 school year. On April 11, there was a fire in one of the University Gateway apartments, resulting in over $500 worth of damage. This incident stemmed from a cooking-related accident and only led to damage to the stove it started on. The second instance occurred at one of the Graduate Village Apartments and resulted in damage of less than $50 to a microwave.
On the Kingston campus, there was one recorded use of force against a student by URI Police. On Jan. 31 an officer utilized his taser after an altercation at the Ryan Center.
“The suspect in this incident, who was under the influence of alcohol, was verbally abusive toward the officer and made aggressive movements to include lunging at the officer with clenched fists,” according to the use of force analysis report for the incident.
An internal review of the incident found that the officer’s actions complied with department policy and that the force used was reasonable in this case, as the prongs on the taser were not deployed.
A misprint in the Clery Act Report indicates two instances of vandalism occurred when there was actually only one instance of vandalism. This incident occurred in one of URI’s residence halls when a homophobic slur was written on the door of a student’s dorm room.
The URIPD regularly monitors social media platforms for trends and clusters of student activity to understand current trends that could affect URI.
“We aren’t daily monitoring per se, but usually during an event or during a time we’re expecting [an increase in] activity we will monitor social media,” Ricci said.
One recent trend that the department has been monitoring has been ‘devious licks,’ a trend that has led people to steal odd and oftentimes important items.
Jagoda called the report a “great tool for community members,” in addition to providing valuable information about campus safety to prospective students, and credited community policing as one of the most valuable tools of the department.