Wichita State to increase evening patrols after recent crimes on campus

Wichita State University plans to increase evening police patrols in response to two recent on-campus robberies, a university spokesman said Tuesday.

The university will have additional officers on campus between 7 p.m. and 3 a.m. “so that we can increase visibility … and also the perception of safety,” said Lou Heldman, a university spokesman.

“This is a safe campus,” he said. “Any incident is a bad thing, and it’s jarring to all of us. We want faculty, staff and students to feel like they’re safe here.”

The university is not adding police officers; rather, it will utilize officers from day shifts more in the evenings, Heldman said. In addition, he said those officers will be doing more foot patrols.

“You can cover more territory in a car, but sometimes you can increase people’s understanding of what they need to do to be safe if we have opportunities for the students and the officers to be talking directly to each other,” he said.

He said the primary responsibility for keeping students safe rests with the students themselves.

“Like the rest of us, students often are so absorbed in their phones they’re not paying attention to what’s around them,” he said.

He stressed that officers are always available to escort students to their cars or residence halls. The latest classes get out is 10 p.m. on weekdays.

The most recent incident of on-campus crime happened Monday, when a student was robbed at knifepoint. WSU police chief Sara Morris sent a campuswide note to students, staff and faculty late Monday.

In it she wrote that just after 9:40 p.m. on Monday, a man pulled a knife from his pocket and robbed a 19-year-old female student of her purse in a campus parking lot south of Charles Koch Arena, not far from 21st and Hillside.

The man then ran off toward 21st Street; the victim continued on her way to Shocker Hall and reported the robbery, Morris’ note said. The student was not injured.

Anyone with information about the robbery is asked to call the campus police detective section at 316-978-3450.

This story was originally published September 8, 2015 at 8:36 AM with the headline "Wichita State to increase evening patrols after recent crimes on campus."