Safety

Campus and City Safety Guidelines

Use Personal Crime Prevention Strategies

Be cautious and aware of your surroundings at all times, especially at night. If you are on the campus late in the evening and you are unable to use UCPD's Night Safety Services, try to walk with others on well-lit and well-traveled routes (see them on the Night Safety Map).

Do not wear earphones or talk on the phone when walking at night.

Do not carry your laptop in an obvious laptop case. Using a regular backpack or book-bag reduces the ability of criminals to pick you as a target. Load tracking software, such as Computrace, onto your system to assist with recovering your property if it is stolen. Record the make, model and serial number of your laptop in a secure location.

Use Night Safety Services

UCPD offers a few different ways to ensure the safety of you and your belongings when you're leaving campus late at night. Choose one of the following ways of getting home safely:

BearWALK Call (510) 642-WALK (9255) or visit BearWalk 2.0 after dusk and before 1:45am, 15 minutes before you need pick up. and a UCPD Community Service Officer (CSO) will meet you and walk with you to your destination within a four to five block radius of the campus. CSO's are uniformed, trained, and carry a police radio. Experience shows that CSO presence makes a difference. Program boundaries are: Cedar (N) Prospect/Highland Place (E) Parker (S), and Shattuck (W.)

Night Safety Shuttles Call (510) 642-WALK to find out when the next shuttle stops near you. Use the Night Safety Shuttle to travel to BART or the southside residence halls. The Ride To-Your-Door lines allow you to ride all the way home within service area boundaries.

Owl Service After 3am, UCPD offers van pick up and drop off service from door to door. Call (510) 642-6760 before 5:45am.

Report Suspicious Activity

Immediately report any suspicious individuals or activities to the University Police at 642-6760. As with any emergency situation, call 9-1-1 from any campus phone to reach the University police Department. Program the University police emergency number into your cell phone, as well: (510) 642-3333. This number is treated the same as a call to 911.

Stay Informed

The University of California Police Department communicates crime alerts to the community via the SA&AR (Safety, Threats & Alerts Report) program, powered by the same technology employed by the BBC, the Wall Street Journal and CNN. ST&AR will allow you to receive up-to-the-minute alerts and information relative to your safety. The program is small and will 'live' in the system tray of your Windows-based computer as a 7-pointed star at right-end of your 'Start' toolbar; a small window pops up when an alert is sent out. (Note: Members of our community who do not use Windows-based systems can subscribe to a list-serve, 'ucb_police_news,' that will email crime alerts to you.)

You can access ST&AR or information about subscribing to the email alert system from the UCPD website; select the Safety Information link.

The annual publication Safety Counts is mailed to all faculty, staff and students near the end of September; please refer to it for crime prevention strategies, current crime statistics, emergency preparedness, and other safety resources. You can view Safety Counts online.

An additional resource that may be helpful is Berkeley Crime Log, which is a browsable database and map of crime incidents reported in the city of Berkeley.