LAS VEGAS—Protecting students on an urban campus is always challenging, but when a university faces high levels of crime, including gang activity, ensuring safety requires more than a standard policing approach.

During a policy symposium hosted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police held here on March 23, the day before the start of ISC West, Chief Carey Drayton from the University of Southern California discussed the university’s strategy to reduce crime by employing a proactive strategy to stop crime before it occurs, using officers to virtually patrol an area using video cameras.

“USC has a reputation as being a high-crime neighborhood,” Drayton said. “The main core of campus didn’t have high crime, but there are six active gangs in that area where students traverse on regular basis.” The university police patrol a campus boundary of 226 acres, but have a response area of 1,414 due to a memorandum of understanding with the LAPD.

Drayton needed to find a way to monitor and protect the more than 13,000 students who live off campus and travel those high-risk areas. But he said it was challenging convincing administration that there was a problem. “When we talk to LAPD, they tell us we have safest grid in south LA and from their perspective we don’t have problems,” he said. “Our 61 robberies a year don’t compare to the 14,000 that they have going on.”

But, he emphasized, those 61 robberies are absolutely devastating to the university community, for both parents and students. “We went to administrators to do something about it, but they wouldn’t let me hire a bunch of people and LAPD was saying there’s not a problem,” he said.

So in lieu of hiring additional personnel to protect students, Drayton said the university turned to video surveillance. “It was imperative that we use technology to help us because it’s clear there’s not enough LAPD or university police officers,” he said. “So we were looking for a way to multiply our force … and the way to do that was through video patrols.”

The university formed a committee and began piloting 10 video patrol cameras at its highest risk areas. University police monitoring the system continuously PTZ and watch students as they walk through the more dangerous areas of the city. Those monitoring have also been trained to detect “behavioral robbery,” watching suspicious people who may be trolling around the campus area targeting students.

Drayton said they rotate those doing the monitoring every two hours and he tries to pick younger people to watch the cameras because of its similarity to video games. 

The initial project was so successful that the university has been adding more cameras, based on crime data. “We track crime and are now getting into predictive policing,” he said. “We’re looking at where to put cameras and where to do video patrol.” And investing in the system has started to pay off. Drayton said the university experienced its lowest number of robberies in 2009. “The system has proven itself and we continue to get funding for it,” he said.

But when the university first deployed the pilot test, Drayton said there was a significant amount of push back from university staff, in particular. “The faculty was completely against this and said students didn’t like it,” he said. But when the police department conducted an online poll, they found that more than 75 percent of students didn’t have a problem with video patrols.

Utilizing video patrols allows the university to try to stop crimes before they occur, but the long-term goal is not necessarily to solve crimes—that’s still the responsibility of the LAPD—but rather to push crime away from its campus.

Looking forward, Drayton said they would continue to add more cameras to the system. They are also considering adding license plate readers to identify vehicles that are circling the campus and may be filled with criminals looking to rob students.