Car and bike thieves and other criminals beware - students at the University of Colorado at Boulder are staking out the campus and alerting authorities of suspicious activity.
The Stakeout program is among many CU-Boulder Police Department programs designed to prevent crime and create a safe environment for students and staff.
Stakeout program students are trained community services aides, said CU Police Lt. John Kish, and are kept out of harm's way. If a crime or suspicious activity is spotted, an aide radios police officers to respond and investigate.
The program has been in use at CU-Boulder for many years and has been highly successful, Kish said. "With the help of this program, we've caught people in the act of breaking into cars and we've arrested bike thieves.
"We do risk analysis over the course of a week or semester - we look for areas prone to vandalism, bike theft, car prowling," he said. "We try to identify some hot spots and then use stakeout guards to keep an eye on places during weird hours. It's a way of using resources in a positive, proactive way.
"On any particular night, we could be staking out anywhere on campus," Kish said.
Community service aides are among about 200 students employed annually by the CU Police and the Parking Services department. The aides are not commissioned officers, but do submit to background checks and receive training comparable to private security guards.
"Two or three students in the program have gone on to become CU Police officers," Kish said. The campus police force is staffed by 40 full-time officers. Typically there are three to nine officers patrolling campus depending on the time of day.
If the University of Colorado Student Union's Nightride/Nightwalk program is in need of extra chaperones, student aides sometimes assist. NightRide/NightWalk provides students, faculty and staff with escorts around the CU campus and anywhere within the Boulder city limits. The program is based in the University Memorial Center and has increased in both use and funding since its inception in 1985.
Student aides also assist by testing the more than 40 emergency phone kiosks scattered across the main campus, east campus, Williams Village, and in the Regent Drive and Euclid Avenue Autoparks. The phones connect to CU-Boulder police and can be used to report crimes in progress, suspicious persons, medical emergencies or concerns about personal safety.
"We've installed several new phones near the new apartment buildings at Williams Village," said Lt. Tim McGraw, adding that the new phones look exactly like the others. "We want to maintain continuity so that people get used to what emergency telephones look like."
The university also has numerous resources available to victims of sexual assault and acquaintance rape. The Office of Victim Assistance, at (303) 492-8855, has trained professionals available to privately discuss incidents and to support the reporting of assaults to authorities.
Medical treatment is available at Wardenburg Health Center and Boulder Community Hospital. Counseling Services in Willard Hall and the Wardenburg psychiatry clinic can provide counseling. The CU Rape and Gender Education Program, known as COURAGE, educates the university community on acquaintance rape. Call (303) 492-4307 for more information.
Additional CU-Boulder support programs cover everything from laboratory and radioactive materials safety to pedestrian and traffic safety. For more information, visit .