Wichita State officials brief Regents governance committee on campus safety, Clery report

Wichita State University police and civil-rights officials told the Kansas Board of Regents governance committee on Jan. 14 that they are tracking a steady set of campus-safety challenges while expanding training and interagency partnerships.

Captain Corey Hurrell, who identified himself as captain of Wichita State University Police, said the university recorded seven incidents in the sexual-assault category for the most recent reporting period; only three of those incidents were reported to the university police, he said, and two of those three were presented to the Sedgwick County district attorney (one resulted in a filing and the other did not). "We did file on the other one. That is going to court," Hurrell said. He also noted one report was made by a family member and the victim later declined to pursue the process; he said such reports remain included in Clery statistics.

Hurrell told regents the campus saw multiple motor-vehicle-theft incidents, four of them involving Kias. "There's a group called the Kia Boys that operates in Sedgwick County as well as all over The United States," he said, adding that the department recovered the vehicles in those cases. He recommended owners be aware of vehicle vulnerabilities and described partnerships with Wichita Police and other agencies that aided recoveries.

The university has expanded training, Hurrell said: "We've had about 61 sessions, and that means we've gotten very close to 1,300 people through that training." He described the CRASE program (Civilian Response to Active Shooter Events) as a three-part course with classroom instruction, optional scenarios and a "Stop the Bleed" trauma-first-aid segment.

Hurrell also described investments in surveillance and response systems. He said campus dispatchers can monitor a campus camera network in real time and that a license-plate-reader system on campus entrances can be set to alert officers when trespassed vehicles arrive. He said the LPR network aided recovery of stolen vehicles.

The captain described a large regional mass-casualty exercise planned and run with Sedgwick County Emergency Management and federal partners. He said the exercise eventually involved local and federal agencies, hospitals, the Red Cross and hundreds of role players and was staged at Century II in Wichita; participants used the exercise for debriefs that highlighted communications among responding agencies as an area for continued improvement.

The committee did not take formal actions tied to Hurrell's briefing. The presentation concluded after a short question-and-answer session during which Hurrell reiterated the importance of cross-agency communication and the value of involving campus strategic communications staff in exercises.