The Office of Public Safety at the College of Staten Island and its director, Paul Murtha, have been busy overhauling the Office and its Website in an effort to better serve and inform the College community.
“We wanted to make the Public Safety Website easier for the campus community to navigate by creating point-and-click menus for both general topics and then for more specific topics,” Murtha explained.
Among the site’s new features are PDF versions of critical resource materials such as the new Emergency Procedure Guide; an Emergency Management Structure Guide, which, according to Murtha, “lays out the basic framework of the College of Staten Island Emergency Management Plan”; a CUNY Alert section to notify the campus community of emergencies; a portal for the new Silent Witness Program, where information and crime tips can be left anonymously to help Public Safety apprehend crime suspects; and the Public Safety Annual Report, which details the number and types of crimes committed on campus.
“The Annual Safety Report has been both revised and revamped,” Murtha explains. “In addition to being more accessible on our Website, the new report also provides students and other community members with the most up-to-date information on the safety of their campus.” Regarding the latest report and the security of the campus, Murtha adds, “The College of Staten Island continues to be one of the safest colleges in the region. Violent crime, both on campus and in the neighborhoods surrounding our campus, has never been lower.”
Murtha credits these improvements to a number of measures that the Office has taken recently, including, the purchase of new portable radios for officers to improve communications and new smaller pathway vehicles to improve patrol coverage inside the campus. The Office is also ready to introduce new eco-friendly Segway patrol vehicles.
On the emergency management front, beyond the creation of an Emergency Procedure Guide for the campus community and extensive updates to the College’s Emergency Management Plan, the Office is collaborating more closely with the NYPD and FDNY to develop response plans and train personnel.
Murtha thanked Joyce Taylor, Deputy to the Vice President for Technology, and her staff for their efforts in improving the Website.
Looking toward the future of the Office online, Murtha hopes to add a Public Safety Community Liaison section to the Website to “link individual officers to specific buildings and departments to act as liaisons in order to improve our service to the campus community.” In addition, Murtha is designing a Public Safety Advisory section that would “provide the campus community with the latest information on safety and security concerns, traffic and gate opening information, and other public safety news.”
