Community Safety Blotter Backlog Leaves Reedies in the Dark
Current Reed first-years have never seen an edition of the Quest with an unofficial version of the Community Safety blotter, annotated with student commentary, on the eighth page. Each week, the official version of the blotter traditionally included a top-level quantitative summary of weekly Community Safety activity with counts of responses by call type. These included, but were not limited to, alarm checks, AOD interactions, medical assistance responses, unlocks, patrols, and theft reports.
Following the activity summary, the blotter included a much more detailed compilation of all weekly reports from CSOs answering calls, responding to alleged violations of college policy or criminal law, and interacting with community members. After this, there would be a section with feedback from Reedies who were involved in Community Safety responses during the week. The blotter also included links to anonymous surveys inviting community members to rate CSOs’ performance. The Quest typically printed only the reports, but the entire blotter would be available on the second tab of the Community Safety section of the Reed website.
However, since mid-January 2025, Community Safety has only published one edition of the blotter, covering the week of April 7-13. The absence of the blotter leaves Reedies uninformed not only on security at Reed but also the conduct of the Community Safety Office, at a time when many are closely scrutinizing its activities in the wake of former director Gary Granger’s unauthorized disclosure of alumni information to federal law enforcement and subsequent termination.
The Community Safety office is still compliant with its federal reporting requirements under the Clery Act, releasing the mandatory Annual Security and Fire Safety Report (ASFSR) on October 1. Unlike the ASFSR, the blotter is not regulated by any external authority, although it appears to have existed in some form since Quest “Crime Beat” coverage began in 1989-90. The Community Safety website archive only goes back to mid-2021, but indicates that blotters were consistently published every week in 2021, 2022, and 2023, and the first half of 2024. The Community Safety office missed a major block of blotter updates for the first time starting with the week of May 13-19, 2024, continuing through the week of September 9-15. None of the blotters from that time period are available online. The CSOs then resumed posting blotters, except for a one-week hiatus in October 2024, and ended this streak after the week of January 13-19, 2025.
A couple of typical entries in the blotter are presented below for reference:
Case #: 230045
Date: 2023 02 02
Time: 1217
Description: Cannabis Use or Possession
Location: Greenwood
Notes: While walking the Canyon trail toward Greenwood, the CS Director encountered the odor of cannabis. As he approached Greenwood, he observed an individual standing underneath the Greenwood building, holding what appeared to be a cannabis joint. The individual confirmed the Director’s observation and also confirmed that they were a student. The student asked if where they were standing was not a good place to smoke cannabis. The Director informed the student that there is no place on campus that smoking cannabis is allowed. The student apologized and extinguished what was left of the cannabis joint.
Case #: 240481
Date: 2024 12 14
Time: 19:05
Description: Medical Assist - Other
Location: Academic Building
Notes: A CSO responded to a request for medical assistance at an academic building. The CSO met with a student who had received an injury during their class. The CSO relayed to the student that the injury they had received was outside of the CSO’s first aid training and that the student would need to be seen by a medical professional for treatment. The CSO offered to call American Medical Response or to arrange for a taxi to transport the student to a nearby medical facility. The student opted to have a friend drive them to a medical facility. Once the CSO was confident that they had provided the first aid within their training, the injury was stable, and that the student had support from others nearby while waiting for their ride, the CSO cleared from the call.
The Quest reached out to acting co-directors of Community Safety Dhyana Westfall ‘05 and Christo Potgieter to learn more about the backlog in blotter publication. According to Westfall, “The Blotter is a low priority, and it tends to get put on the backburner when other things come up. We're currently working through the backlog, and hope to update it soon.” The Quest asked Westfall to provide more specific information on what priorities had taken precedence over the blotter for the Community Safety Office. Westfall elaborated, “There was a snow/ice event in February, and things normally get pretty busy in March/April preparing for the Spring Emergency Drill, 4/20, Nitrogen Day, Renn Fayre, Commencement, Move-out, etc,” and noted that the CSOs spent a “significant portion” of the spring semester short-staffed, meaning CSOs had to work overtime to fulfill their core responsibilities.
Over the summer, the CSOs hired and trained four new staff members, which Westfall said took a significant commitment of time and resources. Around the same time that staffing returned to normal, the college placed Granger on leave to investigate whether he violated college policy by providing information that federal agents used to identify and arrest alumnus Jacob Hoopes ‘23 without a warrant or subpoena. At this time, Westfall and Potgieter were assignedas acting co-directors. The CSOs then had to work on O-Week, before shifting focus to getting the annual ASFSR report out, which Westfall said “takes up a lot of our post-O-Week bandwidth.” Two of the new hires later quit, forcing Community Safety to begin the hiring and training processes again. All of this, Westfall said, has taken precedence over the blotter.
Westfall provided a non-exhaustive list of other CSO responsibilities that take precedence over the blotter as follows:
Auditing/replacing the Naloxone in the Overdose Emergency Kits around campus
Auditing the Blue Light phones
Testing duress alarms around campus
Testing the campus' emergency notification system
Staying on top the the Community Safety team schedule
Approving timesheets
Participating on other department's hiring committees
Participating in Safety Committee (chaired by Environmental Health & Safety)
Participating in the Bias Education Response Team (BERT)
Attending the weekly All Hands meeting (where Conference and Events Planning reviews all of the events scheduled to take place on campus every week, and what their needs are in terms of the setup provided by Building Services, the Catering involved, the AV needs, and the unlocks needed from Community Safety)
Attending the On-call Meeting (where Student Life goes over notable events that happened over the weekend that may require staff follow-up)
Participation in the Care Team
Hosting outreach events like DIY S'mores events
Meeting with Senate Liaisons
Going through safety checklists with WMD before their practices
Going through Beer Garden checklists with Beer Nation prior to Gardens
Staying on top of continuing trainings/certifications for the Community Safety team
Writing reports
Identifying, and sending trainings to Campus Security Authorities
Collaborating with Res Life on Fire Drills
The fall Earthquake Drill
With blotter updates an indeterminate length of time away, Reedies remain uninformed about most Community Safety operations. Former Quest editor Piper S. McKeever ‘26 attested to the importance of the blotter for Reed community members, saying, “Knowing about major medical events, car break-ins, attempted arson, contentious interactions with the surrounding community, and other emergencies that CSOs typically are the first to respond to and have been included in the blotter in the recent past, allows the community the opportunity to be aware of recent events and respond accordingly if necessary.”
The Community Safety office has historically issued federally-mandated “timely warnings” by email following Clery Act crimes on or near campus that could pose a serious or ongoing threat to Reedies, including hate crimes, sexual assaults, burglaries, and homicides. Starting around October 2024, hate crime alerts appear to have been taken over by the Presidential Council on Campus Climate, while the most recent alert of a violent crime near campus was sent by Vice President for Student Life Karnell McConnell-Black instead of Community Safety. Regardless, McKeever said that just because a Community Safety response doesn’t result in a warning to the campus community doesn’t mean it isn’t important to hear about. She said that he benefit of having the blotter available every week outweighs any inconvenience associated with putting it together. “I’d rather have the data myself and be given the information necessary to make a decision about how to take precautions to keep myself safe, particularly as a young woman who spends a lot of time on campus, typically travels by foot, and has unfortunately experienced and witnessed violence in the Reed community,” McKeever said.