Spring Break
Missing the mark
Issue date: 11/20/08
Hopkins's collaboration with a private security company has led to the installation of a state-of-the-art gunshot detection system around Charles Village. While there appears to be no drawback to the system, its placement in the relatively secure area that surrounds the campus is unnecessary at best and at worst reveals a misplacement of priorities by Hopkins, the Baltimore Police and the company itself.
It is hard not to be cynical when considering why Charles Village was chosen as the site for the company to install its new system free of charge. Homewood, rated the safest campus by Reader's Digest, is an obvious location for a security company to promote its product. The system begins just beyond the borders of campus and extends for three miles. Yet, with no more than a handful of shootings in the allocated area per year, installing the system here is a wasted opportunity. Surely, this system would be better utilized (and promoted) in other Baltimore neighborhoods with significantly higher crime rates. If the company desired to have the Hopkins brand name attached to their product, the University should have lobbied for the system to be instead placed around the East Baltimore campus, where there are more incidents of violent crime.
The testing of this system was carried out last Monday morning, after only a rather inconspicuous warning in Today's Announcements was sent late the previous evening. Students and residents awoke Monday morning to gunshots that echoed through the streets. The University should have made a more concerted effort to communicate to students and residents that this test was to be carried out. Nobody should have to awake to the sounds of mysterious gunshots in a city already plagued with crime.
Community leaders have voiced dissatisfaction that residents were not given the opportunity to participate in the plans for this system. This concern is understandable, however unsubstantiated it might be. While the University and the Baltimore Police did not handle the process as diplomatically as perhaps they could have, the system's unobtrusiveness does not raise any legitimate concerns of sovereignty or privacy.
Ultimately, we hope that the new system won't ever prove necessary. We are sure that most would agree with that.
It is hard not to be cynical when considering why Charles Village was chosen as the site for the company to install its new system free of charge. Homewood, rated the safest campus by Reader's Digest, is an obvious location for a security company to promote its product. The system begins just beyond the borders of campus and extends for three miles. Yet, with no more than a handful of shootings in the allocated area per year, installing the system here is a wasted opportunity. Surely, this system would be better utilized (and promoted) in other Baltimore neighborhoods with significantly higher crime rates. If the company desired to have the Hopkins brand name attached to their product, the University should have lobbied for the system to be instead placed around the East Baltimore campus, where there are more incidents of violent crime.
The testing of this system was carried out last Monday morning, after only a rather inconspicuous warning in Today's Announcements was sent late the previous evening. Students and residents awoke Monday morning to gunshots that echoed through the streets. The University should have made a more concerted effort to communicate to students and residents that this test was to be carried out. Nobody should have to awake to the sounds of mysterious gunshots in a city already plagued with crime.
Community leaders have voiced dissatisfaction that residents were not given the opportunity to participate in the plans for this system. This concern is understandable, however unsubstantiated it might be. While the University and the Baltimore Police did not handle the process as diplomatically as perhaps they could have, the system's unobtrusiveness does not raise any legitimate concerns of sovereignty or privacy.
Ultimately, we hope that the new system won't ever prove necessary. We are sure that most would agree with that.
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