Oracle Online: Safety and Security refuses to help student during harassment incident

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October 05, 2004

Safety and Security refuses to help student during harassment incident

Brian Voerding

Editor in Chief

A Hamline student was harassed by a man a few feet from campus Monday night, but when she called Safety and Security, she was refused assistance, she said.

Jenny Gladis was with a friend driving east on Englewood Ave. around 9:30 p.m. last night, when a middle-aged man jumped out of the bushes outside Sorin Residence Hall and stood in front of her car, she said.

She stopped her car and the man walked around to the drivers' side window. He gave her a story about needing $16 to pay for his towed car. After she said she had no money to give him, the man entered the rear drivers' seat of her car and sat down. Gladis said neither she nor her friend offered the man a ride or asked him to get inside the car.

The man, with greying hair and clad in a smock and jeans, first told Gladis to start driving, she said. When she refused and asked him to leave her car, he told her he worked at the HUB and his wife worked in Safety and Security. Gladis said she believed him because the man's smock was similar to those worn by Hamline food service employees. He offered her a week's worth of free food in exchange for her assistance, she said.

Gladis said she was shaking by this point, and when the man pointed at the Hamline apartments and errantly described the Safety and Security office as
being on the fifth floor, she became more worried.

Gladis then pulled out her cell phone and told the man she was calling Safety and Security, she said. As she dialed the number, the man leaped from her car and began sprinting away.

When a Safety and Security dispatcher answered the phone, Gladis described the man and the situation, but said she was refused assistance because the dispatcher told her it was an off-campus incident and out of jurisdiction. The dispatcher, who Gladis described as "polite and apologetic," offered Gladis the phone number for the St. Paul police.

The dispatcher, badge #36, confirmed she had told Gladis the incident was out of jurisdiction and that she couldn't send either of the two on-duty officers to the scene. However, the dispatcher said, she decided to alert the two officers after Gladis' phone call.

Officer #27 said he received a call from the dispatcher around 9:30 p.m., but said he and the other on-duty officer were tied up with other business and did not immediately respond. When he and the other officer arrived later at the scene, he said, they found no sign of the suspect.

Officer #27 said he had encountered a man on campus a half-hour earlier that fit the description Gladis gave to the dispatcher. The officer said he found the man walking on campus near Hewitt Ave. and Old Main mall, and had asked him to leave the premises. The man then walked away toward Englewood Ave., the officer said.

The dispatcher said the officers would probably check later for the man in the same area.

Gladis said she called the St. Paul police as she drove with her friend to her residence in the Hamline apartment building. The police arrived in fifteen minutes and took a full incident report, she said.

Gladis said she was furious with the way Safety and Security handled the incident.

"If [the suspect] had stayed in the car when I called and heard [Safety and Security] tell me they weren't sending anyone," Gladis said, "what might have happened? I don't want to think about it."

Posted by Dax at October 5, 2004 11:25 AM

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