UH-Hilo Issues Annual On-Campus Crime Report

The University of Hawaii at Hilo released its annual security report this week which showed a tripling in the number of drug abuse violations on campus last year.

However, the head of campus security said that statistic is misleading because of a change in the way the numbers are reported.

According to the report, the number of disciplinary referrals for drug abuse violations in 2011 jumped to 99 from 31 the year before. There were 33 in 2009.

Warren Ferreira, director of campus security, said all of the violations occurred in on-campus student housing facilities. He said the numbers jumped because beginning last year, when someone was cited for a violation, everyone in the room was included.

“By any stretch of the imagination we don’t get those kinds of numbers,” he said.

Asked if the majority of those cases involved marijuana, Ferreira said he did not have the statistics but suspected that was likely.

Because the violations were discovered by housing staff, police were not involved. The report said there has been only one on-campus arrest for drug abuse and that occurred in 2009.

According to the report, the number of liquor law violations on campus in 2011 was 63, down from 66 in 2010. There were 20 alcohol-related disciplinary violations in 2009. No liquor-law arrests have occurred on campus in the past three years.

The number of “forcible” sex offenses on campus rose from three in 2010 to four in 2011, with half of those occurring in student housing. In 2010, all of those offenses occurred in housing.

No forcible sex offenses were reported in 2009.

One robbery was reported in 2011 after none was reported the two previous years.

Burglaries decreased to four in 2011 from 10 in 2010, which was the same number as in 2009. Last year all four occurred in student housing, while in 2010 half of those crimes did.

Ferreira said the drop could be attributed to increased efforts to inform residents of the need to lock their dorm rooms and to not allow unknown persons to enter housing facilities.

The report said there were no aggravated assault cases on the campus from 2009 to 2011.

Two students were referred for disciplinary action for possessing weapons in 2011, after no weapons cases the two previous years. There has been only one weapons arrest in the past three years and that occurred in 2010.

There were two car thefts reported at UHH last year and five the year before.

The annual filing of the security report is a requirement of the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Crimes Statistics Act

The 1990 law is named for a 19-year-old freshman at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania who was raped and murdered in 1986 in her campus residence hall.