Crime Reporting

How do colleges and universities report crime? We have a small part of the answer due to the Guilford College case.

GREENSBORO — If students involved in the recent fight at Guilford College had not gone to the magistrate's office to file charges, chances are good that word of the event might never have left campus.

That's not uncommon.

Colleges frequently don't involve city police in on-campus incidents, law enforcement officials say.

But that isn't necessarily a problem. Not everything that technically could be a crime is best handled through the legal system, officials say.

Which is a good thing. It helps keep civil society civil. The occasional break in civility is usually not worth a civil war.

In the recent incident, Palestinian students said they were beaten by football players who used racial slurs. The father of one player has said the Palestinian students started the fight.

Bowers said that if the charges hadn't been filed, the incident would not have seen the light of day. "They probably would have kept the fight a secret," she said.

Law enforcement officials say they know all incidents that might be crimes are not reported. The key, though, is how serious those crimes are and whether decisions about what to report are consistent.

Which for the Palestinians would have been a better way to handle it. Their story is not holding up well. Now instead of it being a campus issue, it has become a world wide issue. Nice going Omar, Feris.

Police Lt. Brian James said not all incidents necessarily need to be reported to police, but those involving serious injuries or serious allegations do.

When that doesn't happen, that can cause problems, he said. It's harder to go back and investigate an incident after the fact, he said.

In the recent Guilford incident, police have said that their role in the investigation has been affected because they weren't immediately called to investigate.

Colleges aren't alone in not always involving law enforcement. The same thing happens at businesses and public schools and other places as well, Neumann said.

In fact, if everyone reported everything, "we'd be swamped," he said.

I think that points out one of the great difficulties in letting people bring charges before a magistrate. The chances of a complete investigation are slim. A trial then becomes a matter of trading accusations instead of evidence. I'll bet that is what the Palestinians were hoping for.

Those Palestinian boys are real smart. Possibly too smart by half.

Cross Posted at Classical Values