PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Temple University says serious crime on campus is down, and leaders point to smart policing and improved technology as strategies to continue that trend.
Assaults on Temple's campus were down 19 percent and robberies were down 20 percent in the 2023-2024 academic year compared to the year before, according to Temple Vice President for Public Safety Jennifer Griffin. Robberies dropped by 20 percent and thefts from cars were down by 36 percent, she said.
As students begin classes this semester, Griffin said Temple is utilizing several new forms of safety technology. Since July, new license plate readers have been in use allowing Temple police to track vehicles through its main campus patrol zone.
"We are the first university in Pennsylvania to use Flock systems," Griffin told KYW Newsradio. "It's really leveraging technology as a force multiplier for our people resources."
In September, the university plans to launch AI software that can alert officers when guns are detected on security cameras.
"This is going to allow an alert to be sent into our dispatch and our leadership team will be able to quickly deploy police officers to that individual who has a weapon and potentially stop them before they use the weapon," Griffin said. "We have made huge investments in upgrading our cameras to overlay this artificial intelligence in key areas."
Griffin says a new dispatch management system is providing more detailed information to officers' patrol car computers.
"We'll be able to have richer data so that we can identify hot spots and locations and times that we want to target," he said.
Griffin acknowledges the challenges in hiring but says two new detectives were added to the Temple force, and seven new officers were hired over the summer. The university has also purchased a virtual training system that includes more than 1,000 scenarios to help officers practice techniques including de-escalation or dealing with active intruders, Griffin continued.
Temple’s president Richard Englert said there are no plans to reduce the school's $32.5 million safety budget.
"Universities around the country have been cutting budgets," he said. "One area that is sacrosanct at Temple University is public safety."
Englert says preliminary enrollment data showing an increase of more than 5,000 new undergraduates is a sign that the public perception of safety on Temple's campus is changing.