Two paradoxes dividing students’ perceptions about campus safety are city and campus crime, but with the 2009 Cal State Long Beach Crime Statistics report published Oct. 1, students can base their perceptions on the facts.
According to a recent article in the Long Beach Press-Telegram, violent crime in Long Beach has increased while it has decreased in neighboring cities like Cerritos, Downey and Lakewood.
“The rise in [violent] crime hasn’t personally affected me yet, but I’ve started taking more security precautions than before,” junior criminal justice major Jonathon Kom said. “I now carry a pocket knife, lock up my car with a steering wheel lock and try to hide everything valuable.”
However, the overall crime rate in Long Beach has been declining for eight consecutive years. From 2008-09, crime decreased by 2.7 percent, according to Dr. Sam Torres, professor emeritus of criminal justice.
According to the Long Beach Police Department, strategies for police outreach are aggressive and proactive, especially for gang enforcement.
Long Beach’s overall crime reduction is also impacted by the decline of the youth population and harsh economic times, according to longbeach.gov. The city’s 2010 Strategic Plan attempted to develop in Long Beach more than 15,000 businesses that employed 225,000 people.
Still, students said that they feel CSULB is not stricken with crime.
“The people here are nice and make me feel relaxed,” international student Peggy Lee said. Yet Lee said that she feels less safe in Long Beach compared to Hong Kong.
“[Hong Kong] is a non-stop city, so many people are still on the streets after midnight. Here, we would avoid being out after dark,” she said.
Out of all the colleges and universities in the United States, CSULB has been ranked in the top 20 percentile in college safety for the last two years, according to Security Magazine’s research analysis, ranking CSULB 13th in 2009 and fifth in 2008.
From 2008 to 2009, the CSU system had a 0.5 percent increase in all offenses reported, but CSULB had a 4 percent decrease.
The only other California universities included within the last two years are University Southern California, University California Irvine and Loma Linda University Adventist Health Services.
In addition to CSULB students, faculty and staff are just as divided with their perceptions on campus safety.
As USC and CSULB are located in urban cities, both have problems with property theft.
The major difference, however, is that CSULB is located in a safer neighborhood.
“[CSULB] is set in a generally nicer area in Long Beach. It’s a big school, but it also has the same issues as USC,” said Michael Park, CSULB media law instructor and USC communication law graduate student, working on his Ph.D. “Coming here, I had no perceptions, but as the economy is bad, property theft is a given.”
Long Beach, the fifth-largest city in the state, is separated into four divisions, nine districts and 52 neighborhoods for its half of a million population.
“CSULB is pretty close to perfect for a university setting as it’s distanced enough from the everyday rush you’d get from the harbor and downtown,” University Police Captain Fernando Solorzano said.
Aside from the University Police Department that works 24 hours, seven days a week, campus recruiters enhance a positive view of the campus at the Outreach & School Relations program.
LB Promise Tours guides fifth grade students from the Long Beach Unified School District for college opportunities, academic programs and careers preparation.
“CSULB has never had to overcome any sort of perception with respect to the safety of the campus and its students,” CSULB director of media relations Rick Gloady said.
“In fact, during the time I’ve been here, it’s been recognized as one of the safest campuses in the CSU system, and there has never been a from-the-public-eye perception of the campus as being unsafe,” Gloady said.
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