By: Muriel Almeida/Staff Writer
During the first week of classes, crime wasn’t as prominent as police officers have seen in the past.
This semester, University Police Chief Alexander Casas, wants to ensure campus safety continues to protect faculty and students when it comes to on-campus crime.
“We’ve looked into more ways on how to be proactive in how we use our cameras,” said Casas, “… the university has about 2,500 cameras.”
FIUPD would need about 20 people looking at 10 cameras each to be able to catch things as they’re occurring; it would be labor-intensive and cost-prohibitive to monitor them constantly and can cause a significant increase in tuition to cover that kind of monitoring he told PantherNOW.
“[We want] to respect the privacy of the student body and we have a lot of cameras but it’s not for that constant daily monitoring,” he said.
On the other hand, when it comes to major campus events, FIU police will group the cameras together and consistently monitor them for the duration of the event.
“I’m very comfortable with what we have, it’s very consistent and sometimes much better than what our peer institutions have as far as surveillance,” he said.
Surveillance video alone won’t help the case but once the victim’s statement is added it creates a supplement to what is visually going on especially if the victim reports it to campus police immediately.
When it comes to solving crimes on campus, FIU police will use all their resources to ensure a well-detailed case with the help of faculty and students.
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