By Clark Stanton
College campuses across the country faced renewed scrutiny of safety this year, as Clery Act crime data highlighted the risks posed by open universities. Students at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, however, said they felt safe and protected because of the campus police presence.
“Our officers were very visible,” Regional Chief of Police David Hendry said. “We patrolled in cars and bikes, on foot and in utility vehicles, and the visibility went a long way toward preventing inappropriate conduct and crimes that might have occurred in an open university campus that was in a downtown setting.”
The Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act is a federal law that requires colleges and universities receiving federal student aid to publish an Annual Security and Fire Safety Report each year, disclosing campus crime statistics and safety policies for the previous three calendar years. The law, renamed and expanded through the Stop Campus Hazing Act in 2024, also requires institutions to report incidents such as hazing, stalking, dating violence and domestic violence, along with traditional crime categories like murder, rape, robbery and motor vehicle theft.
USF St. Petersburg’s current 2024 Annual Security and Fire Safety Report, which was most recently revised in 2025, includes crime statistics from 2022 through 2024 for the campus, nearby non-campus properties and adjacent public streets. The report showed zero murders and zero manslaughters during that three-year period, along with single-digit totals in other serious crime categories.
“The annual security report actually contained the specific crime numbers relative to our campus, but also the area around campus,” Hendry said. “And when you looked at those numbers, you found that they were pretty low, and that was very accurate. We had very few what would be termed serious criminal incidents.”
The safety picture looked different on the larger USF Tampa campus, where local reporting focused on surging motor vehicle thefts and an increase in stalking cases. The 2024 Security and Fire Safety Report for Tampa, along with coverage from local media, showed motor vehicle thefts rising from 109 cases in 2023 to 175 in 2024, with 170 of those incidents involving electric bicycles or scooters parked outside campus buildings.
Tampa also reported 18 stalking incidents in 2024, according to its Annual Security and Fire Safety report.
Those differences underscored how safety concerns varied between USF’s two largest campuses. Tampa faced challenges tied to its size, scooter traffic volume and sprawling commuter environment, while USF St. Petersburg focused more on managing an open, waterfront campus bordered by downtown streets and public access points.
Hendry said USF St. Petersburg relied on a mix of visibility, technology and education to respond to those risks. He pointed to the USF Safe smartphone app, which allowed users to contact police, trigger a mobile “blue phone” panic button and share their route with a friend while walking across campus at night.
“It had a mobile blue phone button, a panic button and the capacity for a person who maybe was down at Harbor Hall late at night to walk back to the other part of campus while a friend tracked them along the way,” Hendry said.
He said the police department also invested in emergency notification systems, campus-wide security cameras and classroom telephones and panic devices, tools designed to help officers respond quickly when an incident occurred.
This campus map displayed key safety infrastructure at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, including emergency blue-light phones, building locations and major pedestrian routes that students used throughout the day.
Beyond hardware, Hendry emphasized education programs and bystander intervention as central to the department’s approach.
“We had a really significant investment in terms of education and programming,” he said. “What we tried to do was train everyone on campus on the types of things to look for and when to report suspicious behaviors, and to feel comfortable reporting things to the police.”
Students said those efforts shaped how they experienced life on campus day-to-day.
“I’d say I felt pretty safe on campus,” USF St. Petersburg 21-year-old Digital Communication and Multimedia Journalism student Jasmin Parrado said. “UPD constantly had a presence on the outer perimeters around campus, and that was good to have, especially for a campus embedded in a busy downtown St. Pete.”
Parrado said her biggest concerns involved transitional spaces between university property and the rest of downtown.
“I’d say the areas that felt less safe to me were just any emptier areas on campus, specifically those teetering between campus grounds and the overall city,” she said. “I was always more alert to those empty areas that were sort of in between.”
She said card-access systems for residential buildings and active student traffic helped create a layered sense of security inside the core of campus.
“We had some tiers of security through our community and through the access points we limited specifically to students and faculty, and I thought that could deter a lot of violations or crimes to begin with,” Parrado said.
At the same time, she said tailgating into residence halls by people who did not live on campus remained a concern. Parrado said she noticed more instances of people slipping in behind students in controlled-access areas between last year and this year and believed additional monitoring in lobby spaces could help.
A 20-year-old fellow and USF St. Petersburg and Digital Communication and Multimedia Journalism student, Makenna Wozniak, said she also described the campus as a relatively safe “bubble,” especially when she lived in on-campus housing.
“I felt rather safe with the police on campus, as there was a large force on campus and they dealt with matters rather swiftly,” Wozniak said. “I definitely felt like I entered a little bubble around campus in terms of safety, because I knew even if it was something small, I could call or ask the police to help without judgment.”
Now, commuting more than 30 minutes to campus and working late shifts at the library, Wozniak said she remained most cautious when walking to the parking garage at night.
Hendry said those perspectives reflected the balance his department tried to strike, maintaining a welcoming, open campus while encouraging students to stay alert and engaged in their own safety.
“What I did not want was for students to feel so safe on campus that they stopped being vigilant and alert,” he said.
He encouraged students to lock their vehicles, secure their belongings, pay attention when crossing streets or walking after dark and report suspicious behavior quickly so officers could respond.
As the latest Clery Act report placed USF St. Petersburg’s serious-crime numbers in the single digits across multiple categories, Hendry said the department planned to keep focusing on visibility, technology and community partnership to preserve what he described as a strong safety record on an open downtown campus.
