Crime decline follows trend in Azusa

Citrus College Campus Safety reported no hate crimes, aggravated assaults or vehicle thefts for four years in its  annual security report released Oct. 1.

Campus drug policy violations fell since 2017. The categories of drug law arrests, drug law and liquor law violations also dropped since 2016.

Campus Safety Director Ben Macias credited his division’s work for reducing drug and alcohol policy violations.

“Those specific statistics, that decreased significantly, by approximately by 81 percent,” Macias said. “I would attribute that to the overall campus’ campaign to make sure that students are aware that one there’s no alcohol allowed on campus, and marijuana allowed on campus.”

The division’s campaign with Student Life helped spread awareness of campus policies and crime, Macias said.

“Those Collective efforts have a huge impact,” he said. 

He also praised students’ use of the Guardian mobile phone app.

“People do utilize that, which is good,” Macias said. “That’s just another platform, to engage our community and keep those lines of communication.”

Macias said because Metro Gold Line commuters exit at Citrus, and because Citrus is an open campus many policy violations and crime comes from non-students.

The trend follows Azusa Pacific University’s Clery Act as well. APU’s drug and alcohol policy violations dropped significantly from 2017 to 2018.

APU has student residents, so liquor and drug policy violations trend higher than a commuter campus like Citrus, but even those numbers have declined.  APU’s campus alcohol policies were more closely followed: from 122 violations in 2016 and 2017 to 73 in 2018.

Campus safety officer Todd Dickson monitors this year’s crime reports. He said Citrus’ relatively crime free streak continued this year.

“We’re there,” Dickson said. “They’re still zero staff or students vehicle stolen yet as of 2019, Aggravated assault, zero. So we continue to keep it very peaceful.”