Not only has Sacramento State Police Chief Mark Iwasa begun to advocate for more communication throughout the university’s campus police department and the entire campus community, he also entered his new position with an initiative aimed at increasing campus safety.

“The things that we have begun to make changes on have a lot to do with information. We are doing our best to get more information out to the campus community both on crimes that have occurred and on potential suspect information,” Iwasa said.

Iwasa’s initiative includes a campus-wide readiness, increased volunteer resources, suggested technology advances and adjustments to the already in place Emergency Notification System. Iwasa said one of the major problems with the current ENS system is less than one-third of the campus community — students and faculty — are enrolled to receive emergency updates.

ENS operates using SacLink email accounts to notify the campus when an emergency is occurring – accounts that are hardly used and less than a third of the community would receive a message in the event of an emergency due to low enrollment.

“The systems that the campus is putting into place for (ENS) will be able to push out more information through text, email and social networking than the program currently in place,” Iwasa said.

Iwasa is looking to implement a faster and more efficient emergency notification system using social networks like Twitter and Facebook, an update that’s overdue. Using social networking sites that have a greater rate of enrollment and more frequent visits than SacLink does is a great way to get the campus community actively involved in its safety.

The system would also potentially provide traffic updates – something long needed in a campus that supports such a large percentage of commuter students and staff. Iwasa has also initiated department discussion about updating campus wide security in three specific areas that he and the department feel should be ready to handle.

“There are three areas we as a department are looking to prepare for in readiness,” Iwasa said. “One is any type of armed assailant on campus. The second is hazardous material type of situation because there is a rail line adjacent to campus that transports, on occasion hazardous materials. And the third area is flooding, the vulnerability of the campus to flood waters. The level of emergency preparedness we would like to elevate not only among our department, but also with campus faculty.”

Among the improvements of communication and awareness in Iwasa’s initiative is also an increased rate of solved cases and suspect apprehension.

Iwasa said the number of solved cases in the last few months regarding crimes committed on campus has also increased. A fact Iwasa partially attributes to the increase of student Community Service Officers to approximately 52 volunteers who patrol highly populated areas on campus. An electronic locking system would also allow police to lock the campus down at the push of a button a safety feature Iwasa said he’s supportive of.

“Essentially, (the electronic locking system) would allow the locks on campus to be locked and unlocked on an electronic timer,” Iwasa said. “If an access card was lost instead of rekeying the locks, we could just delete that card from the system. It’s a great money-saving tool down the road because currently when hard keys are lost all locks that are accessible to that key have to be replaced.

“That means dozens of locks have to be replaced at the cost of literally tens of thousands of dollars. If you had an intruder on campus and you were trying to lock that person or those individuals out, so that students could take cover in classrooms, an electronic (locking) system would allow that to occur almost instantaneously.”

It is clear Iwasa means business when it comes to this campus’ safety and his dedication comes at a time when safety is deteriorating on campuses nationwide.

“I feel that Sac State is a defensible area. And when people come into our area to commit crimes we feel they should be caught and we are the ones to do that,” Iwasa said.

While students and faculty should be personally responsible for safety by practicing common sense and being aware themselves, it is a comfort to know despite the severe cuts being made to our campus yearly, safety has not become a wayside issue. Iwasa’s initiative carries hope for a safer campus.

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