People don’t normally think of a bush as a crime-prevention device. Or the branches of a tree. Or windows.
But Don Strom is an advocate of using such common items in an effort to improve campus security.
Strom, chief of University Police, is a big believer of a program called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), the main concept of which is to take a look at the ways the environment can be altered to eliminate or reduce the opportunities for crimes to occur.
These characteristics are everywhere, if people just take the time to look around.
“The last thing a bad guy wants to have happen is to be seen,” Strom said. “So the more you can use window glass as an opportunity for people to see out of an area, the better it is. If you have a glass door so staff can see in the hallway instead of a solid door, that increases the opportunity to see something amiss and report it to the police.
“Likewise from a landscape standpoint, there are certain levels of how high branches should be off the ground to give you a good line of sight as you are walking across campus so you can see a threat before you get to it.”
Also, the farther bushes are planted from the edges of a sidewalk, the more inconvenient it is for a perpetrator to hide behind them and jump out and attack.
This isn’t a new program — Strom used it before he came to the University nearly five years ago — but the program is becoming more and more popular as people realize how simple it is to implement.
“The big thing is getting people to commit to the time to go to the training to learn about it,” Strom said. “Once they’ve gone to it, the light bulb goes on and it’s pretty powerful stuff. They walk out of a session like that and never look at the world in the same way.
“They see things, whether it’s the design of a building or landscaping, and say, ‘Why didn’t I think of that before?’ It really has been revolutionary in many ways.”
University horticultural and grounds manager Paul M. Norman agrees.
Norman went through the weeklong CPTED program when Strom brought it to campus several years ago, as did the employees of the University’s landscape contractor, Top Care Lawn Service Inc.
“I had always looked at several issues in terms of hiding places,” Norman said. “But CPTED really brought things to light in terms of the extent of the things that we could do.
“We ended up taking some of the existing landscape material and trimming it so you could see through it, and not so much over it — it’s not very aesthetically pleasing to do that. But we trimmed a lot of our landscaping and made sure it wasn’t blocking any lighting, casting any shadows or providing any spots like that where people can hide.
“It’s recommended that bushes be so many feet back from a sidewalk in order to not provide a hiding place. Bushes in front of windows should be cut to be a certain height. Standards have been adopted throughout the country for certain light levels and systems in parking lots and parking garages.”
But CPTED isn’t promoting a barren or sparsely landscaped campus — it’s more a matter of choosing the appropriate shrubbery.
“From the time a building is designed, we work with a landscape architect who understands where we are coming from,” Norman said.
“When we install new landscaping, we have to take into account how large it will grow, how fast it will grow, how difficult it is to maintain.
“And we also rework existing landscape. We used to have a Yew hedge that ran along Forsyth, and that was very disturbing to us because it was between the parking lot and the sidewalk and wasn’t very secure. So we replaced that with something much more manageable.”
While existing landscape often receives a face-lift, new greenery is looked at with an eye well into the future before anything is planted.
“If we’re planting a tree, we look 50 years down the road to see if that tree will grow high enough where someone can climb up and enter a building through a window,” Norman said.
“Or not even necessarily climb into a window, but just look through one.”
CPTED goes much deeper than just trees and shrubs. The program calls for nearly everything to be examined from the time a building is planned to the time the final brick is in place.
Some things that the program recommends include making the stairwells of a parking garage either open-air or enclosed with glass, instead of completely surrounded by concrete.
Or by removing the traditional concrete walls surrounding Dumpsters and replacing them with wrought iron fences the same color as the Dumpster, usually black.
“The concrete walls provide a hiding place,” Strom said. “We’ve found that by using decorative fencing and painting the Dumpsters, it really blends into the background and you don’t notice it as much — nowhere near as much as the concrete walls.”
Or ensuring that bushes in front of windows are cut low enough so a person can’t hide in them, waiting to enter a building through the window.
The reach of CPTED goes all the way into the buildings themselves. Instead of having restrooms with an accessible light switch, it’s recommended that the switch be covered or removed entirely, thus keeping the restroom illuminated at all times.
“It’s a concept that needs to occur from the moment a building is conceived through its building process through the landscaping process and the lighting process,” Strom said. “And everything is reviewed periodically to ensure conditions haven’t changed.
“We have a whole checklist of things, pages upon pages, and if someone requests it we’ll go do an analysis of the building and prepare a report, top to bottom, inside, outside, windows, doors, and just go through our checklist.
“There are a lot of creative things people can do if you just get them to think outside of the box.”