Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 13, 1995 TAG: 9509130057
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
They take turns being on call to respond to such crimes. Virginia Tech Police Chief Michael Jones said the idea is to make sure officers are well-versed in dealing with rape and other crimes in which victims may be extremely traumatized or too scared to come forward.
"Let me put it this way," Jones said this week. "If you had a daughter and she was raped, would you want an old rough and gruff sergeant to go out and interview her, or would you want someone who's been trained to sensitively deal with these cases?''
But he was surprised - and dismayed - when the program became the subject last week of a Page One story in The Washington Times and a critical editorial in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
The Washington Times reported that critics "say the unit could have a chilling effect on academic freedoms if it draws law enforcement into a debate over what constitutes free speech and what constitutes harassment."
The Times-Dispatch labeled the unit "The Sensitivity Police" and said "Tech has set a dangerous precedent by allowing campus police to investigate as criminal what some might consider free speech."
Jones said the two newspapers' take on the unit is "pure poppycock."
He said the unit investigates only things that are crimes under Virginia law; it does not check on people's beliefs. Other parts of the story and editorial also were misleading, he said.
The Times-Dispatch editorial said 20 percent of the department's officers were assigned to investigating these types of crimes. "It makes little sense to dedicate 20 percent of the university's police force to investigate such rare - albeit, hip - occurrences," the editorial said.
Jones said that clearly implies that one-fifth of the department's time is now spent on such cases. But he said that's simply not true.
Six of the department's 33 officers - 18.2 percent - are members of the team. But Jones said they don't work only on hate and sex crime cases; they have many other duties but are on call in case their special skills are needed - in much the same way the department has an officer trained in murder investigation even though it hasn't had a homicide in a decade.
In fact, since the agency created the Sensitive Crime Unit in February, its members have worked only a few hours on such cases, all of them involving sexual assault investigations. But Jones wanted enough people to have the training so someone could be on call 24 hours a day - and so that one of the new unit's three female members could be there for female rape victims.
Melanie Scarborough, who wrote the Times-Dispatch editorial, said it did not imply that 20 percent of the the officers were working full time on the unit. "Nowhere in there does it say that," she said.
Kenneth McIntyre, The Washington Times's metropolitan editor, said his paper's story - which said "nearly 20 percent" of the force "will be devoted to the unit" - accurately reports how the program operates. "We are very happy to stand by the story."
Both newspapers also said no sexual assaults were reported last year at Tech. Jones said no victims were willing to make an official report to the campus police last year, but others made reports to rape-crisis counselors. In 1994, 21 Tech students reported sexual assaults - mostly rapes - to the Women's Resource Center of the New River Valley or Tech's Women's Center.
Donna Lisker said she has personally talked with 19 sexual assault victims since she took over at the university Women's Center in February. And Lisker said that for every victim who comes forward, there are others who are too afraid - or feel too ashamed - to tell anyone.
"That editorial belittles their experiences," Lisker said. "Sexual assault is a problem at Virginia Tech, and there's a very great need for this Sensitive Crime Unit." The unit will make it more likely that victims will come forward, she said.
The Washington Times' McIntyre said the information about the lack of rape reports came from a university spokesman.
Henry Bauer, a Tech chemistry and science studies professor who sparked the critical articles, doesn't believe hate or sex crimes are a major problem on campus. When you create a special unit, he said, "these things are made to appear more common and more significant than they are." It creates a "crisis atmosphere."
But Lisker said Virginia Tech has 24,000 students, and it's ridiculous to presume there are no sexual assaults in so large a group.
U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics studies have consistently found that sex assaults happen more often than they are reported to police. These random surveys ask people whether they've been crime victims.
Its 1993 national survey found a rate of 2.2 rapes or other sexual assaults per 1,000 teenagers and adults. If that figure held true for Tech, that would mean nearly 53 sex crimes a year.
Bauer counters that there's no way to accurately say how many sexual assaults there are. "It is guesswork how many of these things are not reported," he said.
He said he became concerned after seeing a note about the new police unit in a faculty newsletter. A police news release said the unit's officers had been "trained to assist in the investigation of acts of intolerance" committed because of someone's race, religion, ethnic background, sexual orientation or gender.
Bauer thought that smacked of mind control. "I didn't know intolerance was illegal or something that police could investigate," he said.
He contacted a colleague in the Virginia Association of Scholars. Bauer said the colleague got in touch with The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper controlled by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.
The Washington Times story last week was followed by the Times-Dispatch editorial Saturday.
Bauer said he has talked to the Tech Police Department and now "I'm quite sure the intention is not to be the thought police." But he said the agency should have made it clearer it was talking about criminal acts when it talked about investigating "acts of intolerance."
He believes discrimination in the name of protecting minorities is a growing trend. "If you're male and if you're white," he said, "then you're discriminated against routinely."
Police Chief Jones said the First Amendment gives people the right to express their opinions, even if they are racist. But if it crosses over into racial threats or assault, he said, it's a crime - and his department will investigate.
by CNB