Campus police raising awareness for Safety Day

The upcoming Safety Day allows for the GTPD to interact with the community. Students and faculty are invited to stop by and meet the people who help keep Tech safe.

Monday’s Labor Day activities may be what many of you are excited about this week, but at the corner of Hemphill Avenue and Ferst Drive, a lot of people in blue uniforms will be busy putting the final touches on their plans for Wednesday, Sept. 3 — Campus Safety Day. The Georgia Tech Police Department hosts this annual event as a chance to bring our officers, equipment and tools of the trade out to Tech Walk to talk with students about safety on campus.

It’s one of our favorite days of the year because we get to show off what we do and meet more members of our community.

This year, Georgia Tech police officers will be joined by partners from around campus such as the Counseling Center and Women’s Resource Center, as well as colleagues from off campus including the Atlanta Police and Atlanta Fire Rescue.

We’ll also have four-legged friends from our K-9 units, where you can meet the newest furry member of our team, a yellow Labrador U.S. Marine Corps veteran named Miley.

Another addition to the department is the enhancement of our Dispatch room to what is now a state-of-the-art operations center that we use to take your calls and visually patrol campus activity.

More than 1,000 cameras are positioned around campus to give us an extra set of eyes when we need them, whether it’s to remotely check on a report of suspicious activity or to review video footage after an incident has taken place. These cameras have been integral to solving a number of cases since their installation.

Georgia Tech is an open campus in an urban setting. We work hard to patrol the campus and mitigate crime, but criminals tend to think of our students as easy targets.

We can’t be everywhere all the time, which is why we rely on everyone — students, faculty and staff — to be aware of their surroundings and report suspicious activity on campus.

We follow up on all calls and tips, as information you provide to us is critical to our crime prevention and investigative work.

We want to hear from you, whether it’s through a phone call, email, or message on Reddit (you can find us at www.reddit.com/user/GaTechPD).

We are here to serve you, and our community policing approach is most effective when we can maintain close relationships with everyone in our campus community.

Though we observe Campus Safety Day only once a year, safety is a 24/7/365 goal for our team.

We offer a variety of safety resources you can take advantage of, including safety apps, group presentations, personal safety classes, notices on Facebook, and registration of valuables.

Check out your options, which you can access through our websites: www.police.gatech.edu/services and www.police.gatech.edu/emergencypreparedness.

Stop by our office at 879 Hemphill, call us any time and if you see us out patrolling the campus, please stop us to say hello.

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