Frustrated by the rising number of violent crimes targeting University of California at Berkeley students around their campus, a group of parents is taking the matter into their own hands.
SafeBears, a non-profit organization that describes itself as comprising “1,300+ Cal parents and community allies working to improve safety for UC Berkeley students,” has launched a pilot program to increase patrol forces near campus, as both university and city police departments are struggling with a shortage of manpower.
The parent-funded program has raised more than $40,000 to hire six private “safety ambassadors” to patrol the public areas near the campus during night and early morning hours from March 6 through March 23. They will not enter university property, but will stick to public areas, including public streets and sidewalks.
“I think a lot of people are breathing a sigh of relief, because people are rattled,” SafeBears President Sagar Jethani told The Epoch Times. “There has been so much violent crime against Cal students lately, that I think everyone realized that the situation needs to change.”
A father of two boys attending UC Berkley, Mr. Jethani said he didn’t expect to have to worry so much about his children’s safety when he sent them to one of the most prestigious schools in the country.
Among the concerns of Mr. Jethani and UC Berkeley parents alike are a 20 percent increase in armed robberies—sometimes during daylight—carjackings, trespassers gaining access to residence halls, assaults, and violent behavior by non-affiliates that “happens almost daily.”
In one incident this February, an unhinged man fired nine rounds on the campus, but students were not alerted through the university’s emergency alert system until nearly 40 minutes after the shooting took place.
“That’s because they don’t have enough officers,” Mr. Jethani said, noting that while the campus police would ideally provide security throughout the campus, it could take years to restore the police department to its full strength after a years-long push to defund it. The UCPD now has 46 sworn officers, almost halved from about 80 officers a decade ago.
The Yellow Jackets
SafeBears’ private security pilot is inspired by and modeled after a long-running program at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. Since 2009, the USC has hired “security ambassadors” to patrol the school’s parameters and surrounding neighborhoods, providing an extra layer of security in an effort to deter crime.“When USC deploys its safety ambassadors, they wear bright yellow jackets just like ours new,” Mr. Jethani told The Epoch Times. “We’re covering some of the areas that have been the site of high crime activities—some of the darker areas around campus where students are concerned about walking alone.”
The safety ambassadors at Berkeley, like their USC counterparts, do not carry a gun or pepper spray, batons, or handcuffs. Their role is to provide a visual deterrence to any threats against students. If they encounter a situation that starts to escalate, they are equipped with radios and can call each other or Berkeley police for assistance.
Even though the yellow jackets are unarmed, their presence seemed to provide students and families a much-needed sense of security.
“I’ve heard from a number of students who are excited about this program, who are grateful that we are doing this, and who hope the university will continue to fund such a program moving forward,” Mr. Jethani said. “I’ve heard from a number of Cal families as well from parents who are very grateful to see somebody stepping up and doing something tangible to make their students safe.”
When asked about the difficulties SafeBears had to overcome, Mr. Jethani said financial resources was a challenge at first, but his organization soon found itself overwhelmed with the generosity of parents.
“A program like this, even for three weeks, like we’re doing, costs quite a bit of money,” he said. “We thought this would take many months to raise the money for this program. It took a couple of weeks.”
The Parents’ Pleas
According to Mr. Jethani, UC Berkeley parents have been repeatedly voicing their concerns to the school administrators, but those pleas weren’t responded with actions they wish to see.“I fully believe that the UC Berkeley administration cares about student safety,” he told The Epoch Times. “The problem is, they’re not acting with enough urgency to actually make students safer.”
The parents’ calls for increased security at committee meetings and hearings are often met with a financial excuse, the father said. “When we talk to the UC Berkeley administration about the kind of safety improvements it needs to make, we are often told that they don’t have enough money, that there’s a budget shortfall, and that if only they had more funds, they would do all of these measures and more.”
“So what that tells us parents is that the school has money, and that they just don’t view student safety as an investment worth spending that money on,” Mr. Jethani said. “We wish that were not the case.”
For parents across America who share similar concerns, Mr. Jethani encouraged them to act instead of waiting for the colleges to step in.
The Officials’ Response
While SafeBears is hoping that UC Berkeley will continue to fund the program when it ends, the university seemed less than enthused about taking it over.“Hiring private security raises a number of concerns including the training and experience of individuals hired by such firms,” a spokesperson for the public school said in a statement. “Further, any security effort on the campus must be coordinated with UCPD, independent of the funding source.”
“We believe that university funds are better spent hiring more sworn or non-sworn UCPD officers for standard daily response efforts,” the spokesperson continued. “Parents who want to donate funds toward additional campus security can do so via a university fund that has been established.”
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin, meanwhile, has recently vowed to form a regional task force to address the spike in crimes across the entire East Bay, promising “greater coordination and regional strategies” to deter criminals.
“It awakened America’s collective consciousness to the systemic racism that pervades our society, from education and housing to employment, and of course, policing,” he wrote at the time.
