Operation SAFE Start, a weeklong program at ASU that typically targets students who live on campus, will take on the task of educating everyone who lives in the city of Tempe.
The program is the brainchild of the ASU and Tempe police departments, featuring fliers with various safety tips that are being handed out by patrol and motorcycle officers and posted on the ASU Web site.
In past years, Operation SAFE (Safety Awareness For Everyone) Start offered information solely about on-campus safety, covering topics such as living in a residence hall and protecting oneself from sexual assault.
This year, however, police have packed the program with more information in order to accommodate the growing Tempe population, said Sgt. Steve Carbajal of the Tempe Police Department.
According to a statement released by Tempe police, these new programs include sexual-assault-prevention awareness, traffic enforcement around Tempe schools, party patrols, cool-weather-crime prevention and tips, and a new youth-alcohol-enforcement squad.
Cmdr. Jim Hardina of the ASU Police Department said the program will also prepare students for heavy traffic enforcement on Apache Boulevard and University Drive due to light-rail testing and dangerous parking areas.
The biggest problem around campus is with pedestrians and bicyclists, he said.
“I think who will benefit the most — and also who it will affect the most — are the students that actually live on campus,” Hardina said. “They are mostly the ones that would be walking across campus or riding their bikes on campus.”
Carbajal said the goal is not only to spread the message to students who live on campus but to everyone who lives in Tempe.
“With some of the back-to-school components, it seemed like it focused around the elementary, middle and high school and ASU,” he said. “But we need to get the message out to everyone in Tempe that safety awareness is important.”
Carbajal said even those who do not have children in school can benefit from the information presented in the fliers and on the Web site, like not leaving the garage door open, locking the front door and removing valuables from the car that could be stolen.
“Criminals don’t really know any [geographical] boundaries,” Carbajal said. “We have crimes that occur in Tempe that the same person or group might be doing in Mesa or Chandler and we’re very successful in communicating between our East Valley and West Valley cities.”
Carbajal and Hardina both said that it would be good to see the program expand but do not have any definite plans yet of how or when that could occur.
Criminal-justice and pre-law junior Jonisha Campbell said she would also like to see Operation SAFE Start expand into workshops, which she believes give more time for feedback.
Campbell said that what most students would see as just another program, the criminal-justice students would see as an inspiration.
“A lot of students might look at it as another thing that they’re coming out with that’s going to take up time or money, but the criminal -ustice students will see it as a need and have a lot of respect for it,” Campbell said. “We’re going to support it because we know what it’s for.”
Reach the reporter at allison.gatlin@asu.edu.
