Sex offender arrested, campus safety question

State Hornet Staff

Just days after universities and colleges across the U.S. released the annual Clery Reports listing all criminal activities on campus, a man exposed himself at the University Union then jumped from the third floor, breaking his leg while attempting to evade police.

The suspect, Shawan Wimberley, a registered sex offender, was seen on camera on Oct. 5 exposing himself to an unidentified female sitting at a table at the Academic Information Resource Center.

“We’re gonna continue to do what we normally do, which is to provide the campus community with information as it comes in and we will act accordingly,” Sacramento State Chief of Police Mark Iwasa said.

Wimberley’s offense counted as the felony version of indecent exposure (3-14.1) for both accounts, because of multiple offenses in the past. Iwasa said indecent exposure does not count as sexual assault, listed instead under “other” crimes.

Vice President of Information Resources and Technology Larry Gilbert said, in an email, incidents like Wimberley’s would be reported by staff or students to the university police.

“The AIRC has around-the-clock coverage by Community Service Officers and video cameras,” Gilbert said.

Gilbert said the AIRC plans to initiate access for only registered students from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. beginning Nov. 1.

While sex offenders in California are prohibited from living near schools and cannot go within 500 feet of a school or anywhere children may be present, there are no laws restricting registered sex offenders from being present, or attending, a public college or university in California.

When a sex offender does enroll at a college or university, they must register as a sex offender to campus police within five days, and within five days of leaving the institution.

This enables universities to comply with Megan Law requirements, but leaves registered sex offenders who are not enrolled at Sac State access to campus without the knowledge of campus police, administrators or students.

Because Sac State is a public university, there is no way to tell if someone entering campus is a registered sex offender or other type of criminal.

“As long as people behave themselves, we welcome them, right?” Sac State Police Chief Mark Iwasa said. “In this particular case, he [Wimberley] was a bad guy so we had to act when he committed the offense.”

Fourth year biology major Alex Catanio was unaware of a man exposing himself at the AIRC last week.

“I’m glad I wasn’t there for that,” Catanio said. “It makes me a little worrisome. I really like the convenience of it [AIRC], but it’s hard to balance convenience with any type of people being able to walk in any time of day.”

Safety concerns go beyond Wimberley, with theft issues on campus and homeless people sleeping at the AIRC late at night.

“I guess it’s no safer than any other building,” Catanio said. “I would imagine people that wanted to walk into any building really could do it.”

Catanio utilizes the AIRC everyday for at least 45 minutes. He said he feels relatively comfortable working there, but often sees homeless people sleep in the facilities the times he attends at night.

September was one of the busier months for Sac State PD, with a total of 45 theft-related crimes and about a dozen other crimes.

“As far as people coming on campus that are non-students that commit offenses, it does happen very frequently,” Iwasa said. “Bike thefts, and some of the other crimes that we have are usually not students. Indecent exposure-type things occur probably two or three times a year. And they’re always non-students.”

Iwasa said he hopes to lay out changes to reduce crime, like adding a bike compound to the residential area, where nine out of 16 bike thefts were accounted for. The issue with that would be having a 24-hour staff watching over the area if a compound was installed.

“That is not a cheap proposition, of course,” Iwasa said.

Sac State PD posts their activity and reports on their Facebook page, putting out all the information they receive for on campus crimes.

“It [report on Facebook] was effective in getting the information we needed to arrest him [Wimberley],” Iwasa said.