In light of recent events, student safety has been an ongoing conversation among university officials.
Lieutenant Charles Yearta of Winthrop’s campus police gave some helpful tips for students to use while on and around campus.
“If a student finds themself in a situation that they shouldn’t be in, the first thing to do is to get away from that situation by any means necessary,” Yearta said.
Yearta said that fight or flight is important in dangerous situations. If a student is able to run away from the situation, he encourages them to do so and to try to seek a building or well-lit area, like a parking lot.
Yearta said to run and seek safety while “screaming the whole time, drawing attention to yourself.”
Once the student has arrived to a well-lit area, if the student is outside of Winthrop jurisdiction, it is best to call the city police of the jurisdiction they are currently located so help will be sent as quickly possible.
If the suspect has a weapon, Yearta said there is no right or wrong way to handle that situation.
“Honestly, its a personal decision,” Yearta said. “Everybody’s not going to do the same thing. Everybody is going to react differently.”
Yearta said the best way to try to handle a dangerous situation where a weapon is involved is try to prepare yourself mentally for what could happen.
He advised students to remember some of the precautions they would use in their regular homes and try not to view Winthrop’s campus as as safe haven from all criminal activities.
Yearta said Winthrop is also in a small city, which is not completely free from crime.
“We have low crime compared to outlying cities, and we have low crime compared to universities of our same size, but we still have crime. We don’t want people necessarily to become paranoid, but we don’t want them necessarily to walk around in a fog or a mist not knowing what’s going on around them,” he said.
Yearta said the most important thing for students to do is to pay attention to their surroundings.
“A lot of times we see individuals, including our own students, who in today’s technology age, they’re engrossed in something,” Yearta said. “The biggest part is keep your head on a swivel if you can, keep your mind open, know what’s around you.”
Students should remember to lock their car and residence hall doors to protect themselves and their property. Students should have local emergency contacts to reach out to someone when needed.
Some emergency contacts and resources can be found on the free LiveSafe App.
Once downloaded, the app will display a “select your university” or location menu. After selecting Winthrop University, the app will download the Winthrop template.
Winthrop’s template has a resource page with important numbers such as the Office of Victims Assistance, Health and Counseling Services, Dean of Students Office, Campus Police and other local law enforcement in the surrounding areas including the Rock Hill Police Department. The resource page is also a convenient way for students to stay informed on parking rules, general safety tips and emergency protocol for residence halls.
The app features ways students can submit tips and communicate with Winthrop police via text. Students can select the “Report Tip” tab and choose to anonymously inform the police of any suspicious behavior, crimes or knowledge they may have about an incident. This feature allows students to send photos or videos to campus police in addition to text.
When students submit a tip through the LiveSafe app, the department will receive it on a monitor which is watched 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The monitor will make a continuous alarming sound so a dispatcher will know a student has submitted a tip or is trying to contact the department.
The dispatcher is able to have a text conversation with the student about their safety and ask for more information about the suspect or situation. The tip reporting feature still works outside of Winthrop’s zone.
“If they have [the app] set up to where they report it to Winthrop University, wherever they go it will report back [to Winthrop police],” Yearta said.
There is also a feature where students can allow their friends to watch them walk from one destination to another until the student has arrived safely.
LiveSafe is paid for by the Winthrop police department every year. This is a national product used by thousands of universities and is available on iOS and Android.
The campus police escort service is also available for students to use when commuting across campus during the night—from sunset to sunrise—but have limited officers on duty.
“We only have so many officers on a shift and those officers are not only doing escorts but they’re doing a plethora of other things. Some of it criminal justice action, some of it security-related things they need to do such as locking up buildings, checking property,” Yearta said.
Every time the campus police department receives a call for an escort, the call is logged from the time the call was made, the officer was dispatched, until the service was completed.
“We have run reports over the last three years, and on average for those three years, for someone to call and request an escort ‘til the time that the escort is completed, the average response time for that is 10 minutes,” Yearta said.
Yearta said he understands that some wait times have been under 10 minutes while others have been over 10 minutes. Shorter wait times can be influenced by less calls and the proximity of an officer at the time of dispatch.
“The times that it’s been way over that is because the officer is responding to something that takes priority i.e., an armed robbery, an assault, or there is some underlying issue,” Yearta said.
Yearta said some nights there tend to be more escort requests, for example when it is raining, which causes the wait time to increase with each call. Officers are dispatched for the escort service in the order of the calls.
Yearta said the dispatcher should give each student an approximate wait time, and if not, ask the dispatcher to make sure.
“During that time, stay in your car, stay in the building, stay safe,” Yearta said.
