Quinnipiac University Department of Public Safety’s most recent annual security and fire safety report revealed a decrease in reported crime across several categories. The report details information from Jan. 1, 2024, to Dec. 31, 2024.
The annual report is completed in compliance with the section 485(f) of the Higher Education Act — which is the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Crime Statistics Act — most often referred to as The Clery Act.
The act was signed into law by former President George H.W. Bush in 1990 and is named for Jeanne Clery, a student at Lehigh University, who was raped and murdered at 18 years old in her dorm room in 1986, according to the Congressional Research Service’s “History of the Clery Act: Fact Sheet.”
The Clery Act requires “colleges and universities to report campus crime data, support victims of violence, and publicly outline the policies and procedures they have put into place to improve campus safety,” according to the Clery Center.
It is also completed in compliance with the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 as well as in response to Connecticut General Statute Section 10a-55 and Public Law.
The report’s information reflects incidents that took place in “buildings owned or controlled by the institution and used for educational and institutional purposes, as well as public property within or immediately adjacent to and accessible to the campus,” according to Joe Dease, the Clery compliance officer and investigator.
This includes educational and administrative facilities, residence halls, university-owned or leased residential houses and apartments. However, a separate report is filed for Quinnipiac’s North Haven Campus.
Here’s a breakdown of the report:
The report includes data from the most recent three years for comparison, with the most recent report including information from 2022 to 2024.
In 2024 there were no reported robberies, burglaries or motor vehicle thefts — this is the same as in 2022 and 2023. There were also no reported murders, rapes or aggravated assaults.
The Violence Against Women Act offenses saw several decreases in reports. There were no reports of domestic violence for the third consecutive year and no reports of dating violence as compared to one in 2023.
The report revealed a significant drop in reported stalkings from 2023 — dropping from five to zero in 2024.
Chief of Public Safety Tony Reyes explained that there could be several reasons for the reported decreases, including Public Safety crime prevention methods. However, the lower numbers could also be a result of less reported crime, not necessarily an actual decrease in criminal acts committed.
“So if we just happen to have less incidents of domestic violence or domestic related incidents that maybe there might not be a correlation to any efforts, so to speak, it just happened to be that there were less of those,” Reyes said.
In regards to reporting crimes, Reyes noted that Public Safety works to ensure and promote that they are an “approachable resource.”
“We want students to feel really comfortable in the process of reporting incidents,” Reyes said.
Reyes also noted the unpredictability of crime.
“You could just have a spike in stalking incidents that might not necessarily be precipitated by anything we’ve done or anything, it just kind of organically happens that way,” Reyes said. “Especially with domestic incidents it’s just typically like there were more incidents of maybe domestic violence or something that led to stalking.”
In regards to stalking, Reyes noted a specific action taken by Public Safety in order to prevent those crimes.
“A couple of years ago, we had an incident where an Uber driver was contacting a student, and we had him charged with stalking and banned them from the university,” Reyes said.
After the incident, Public Safety implemented policies to be stricter with Uber drivers and any other rideshare services. Reyes explained that the policies made it more difficult for those drivers to come on campus undetected and increased the amount of officers on Hogan Road — the previous rideshare drop-off and pick-up location.
“So if we just happen to have less incidents of domestic violence or domestic related incidents that maybe there might not be a correlation to any efforts, so to speak, it just happened to be that there were less of those,” Reyes said.
With several decreases across categories, Quinnipiac did see an increase in illegal weapons possession referrals — with one from York Hill in 2024 after it decreases from one in 2022 to none in 2023.
While the number of drug law violation arrests and liquor law violation arrests remains zero since 2022, there are still reported referrals for both. In 2024 there were 84 drug law violation referrals — as compared to 127 in 2023. Over half (62) were on the Mount Carmel campus, with the remaining 22 on the York Hill campus.
There was also a drop in liquor law violation referrals, from 324 in 2023 to 318 in 2024.
Though the report shows several drops across categories, Reyes ensures that seeing a decrease doesn’t mean Public Safety “rest(s) on (their) laurels.”
Public Safety continues to double down on efforts to enforce a safe campus.
“We continue to do things through education, through communication, awareness efforts, efforts to notify and inform students of resources, make them as easily accessible and available to students as possible, to promote them as well as we can, so that we can prevent these incidents and prevent spikes,” Reyes said.
