News Release

 
In January 2005, President William Brody announced a Security Action Plan for the Homewood campus of The Johns Hopkins University. The plan consisted of the following points:

I. Immediate action

1. Hire off-duty Baltimore City police officers to patrol in Charles Village at night and overnight. These officers will be in their police uniforms and will be armed. They will patrol in university vehicles and, at times, on foot. These patrols will begin as soon as we can engage the officers.

2. Contract for additional foot-patrol guards from Broadway Services Inc. Silver Star Security. At least at first, we will assign officers on the night and overnight shifts to be a visible security presence along the Charles Street corridor from Wolman and McCoy halls and the Eisenhower Library south to Homewood Apartments. That deployment will be adjusted with experience and with input from students. [BSI provides the bulk of the guard force at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Johns Hopkins Bayview and Mount Washington campuses.]

3. Replace the current guard service that staffs the security desk at Homewood Apartments with BSI guards.

4. Station a BSI guard at the Bradford Apartments to check IDs and obtain positive identification of all guests and visitors. [We will be vigilant to ensure BSI provides personnel for all of these assignments who are well-trained and who meet our high expectations for performance.]

5. Accelerate implementation of video surveillance cameras, to be monitored on a 24/7 basis from a state-of-the-art Security Department communications and monitoring center. Phased implementation of a multi-faceted plan will follow expeditiously.

6. Continue aggressive pursuit of city, electric utility and university improvements in street lighting in Charles Village, including 22 specific new recommendations for additional improvements in lighting in the community. We will implement those recommendations as they apply to university buildings and immediately begin working with owners of private property to encourage and assist them to install the necessary lights.

7. Hardware that will improve the reliability of our on- and off-campus network of blue light emergency telephones has been ordered and will be installed within four weeks.

8. Urgently address the concerns about shuttle service cited at our recent meetings with students and work with students to identify the most effective approach.

9. Add parent and student representatives to our Committee on Campus Safety and Security. We will convene the first of frequent, regular meetings of the expanded committee very shortly. The committee, under the chairmanship of Dr. James McGill, senior vice president for finance and administration, will monitor our progress in implementing this action plan and recommend additional steps.

10. Appoint a group of outside experts to conduct a review of campus security, and to recommend improvements. This group will report directly to me. This measure will reinforce our ongoing consultation with peer universities to ensure that we are following best safety and security practices.

II: Thirty- to ninety-day action

11. Tighten resident and guest check-in procedures at Wolman and McCoy halls. Specifically, we will reconfigure the lobby areas so that anyone entering the building, including guests, must pass through turnstiles and identify themselves to a security officer. There will be no "tailgating." That is, no one, including residents and other students, will be able to enter the building with or on the heels of someone else without presenting proper identification. The renovations necessary to implement the new system should be complete within about 45 days.

12. On the campus side of Charles Street, impose similar resident and guest check-in procedures at the Alumni Memorials Residences, where, since fall, additional guards have been stationed. Given the physical configuration of these buildings — which each have multiple entrances — we will have to construct gates across and guard stations at the courtyards of both AMR I and AMR II. Residents of those buildings, and of buildings A and B, will be required to pass through those gates. They and their visitors and guests will be required to provide positive identification. There will be no tailgating. We are engaging architects immediately to draw up plans and expect to start construction before the end of the semester.

13. Devise and implement a new system to provide students with reliable information about the security systems and practices of off-campus apartment buildings. And we will work actively to encourage landlords of those buildings to improve security.

III. Longer-term action

14. We are committed to meeting the need of our students for more university-owned housing, sufficient housing so that any undergraduate student who desires to live in a university building can do so. Charles Commons, now under construction, will house more than 600 students when it opens in the fall of 2006. Speed up the planning process for additional university housing, including an expanded freshman quadrangle on the campus side of Charles Street.

15. Continue to work in collaboration with our neighbors and with the city of Baltimore on a variety of fronts. Our goal must be to protect the stability and enhance the livability of the nearby neighborhoods where so many of our students — and our faculty and staff — reside.

[11.29.05]