Concerned parents calling themselves SafeBears have raised $40,000 to pay for security guards or “safety ambassadors” to patrol the UC Berkeley campus area for a few weeks in early March.
UC Berkeley may be one of America’s most prestigious schools, but its location in the California Bay Area has parents and students both wary of safety on campus. A group called SafeBears, that touts itself as comprising “1,300+ Cal parents and community allies working to improve safety for UC Berkeley students,” has worked to solve the problem themselves, hoping their prototypical program of patrols around campus will inspire the college to take more action themselves.
The SafeBears website declares that “Cal parents raised over $40,000 to conduct a private security pilot program around UC Berkeley” that was “inspired by USC’s Safety Ambassadors program.” These privately hired security guards have been patrolling the campus area from 6:30 p.m. at night to 3 a.m. starting on March 6, but will only continue to do so until March 23.
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The organization of parents cited a litany of local issues and incidents making the case that students are in dire need of more protection on campus, ranging from citing an “armed robbery spree” to a pattern of trespassing incidents, such as when “a convicted felon made his way to a sixth floor shower in a first-year residence hall before being arrested by UCPD.” All the while, SafeBears noted that the Berkeley Police Department is “in the midst of a staffing crisis.”
SafeBears president Sagar Jethani, who has twin sons at Berkeley, voiced his frustration to CBS News arguing the college has not taken enough action to protect students themselves, “The fact is if they’re not going to act, despite repeated pleas from parents and students to take more substantial action, then we’re going to act.”
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He added further, “We want to, frankly, turn up the heat with the administration. We want to show that we’re not content to just wait forever to have these safety ambassadors deployed.”
The pilot program of these patrols by hired security will reportedly only last until March 23, after which time parents reportedly hope the university will take over.
Fox News Digital reached out to UC Berkeley’s campus for comment and did not receive an immediate reply.
