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Dad and mom of scholars on the College of California, Berkeley have turn into so involved concerning the security of their offspring that they’ve employed personal safety to guard their native environment.
SFGate studies that oldsters have been pressured to take issues into their very own palms amid a rise in violent crime across the UC Berkeley campus, situated exterior San Francisco:
Dad and mom and group members of SafeBears, a nonprofit launched in 2022, raised $40,000 in late 2023 to launch the pilot program, which started March 6 and ended Saturday, in accordance with the group's web site . Six safety guards from a third-party contractor, StreetPlus, are patrolling 5 routes round campus and the college's residence halls on foot and bicycle day by day from 6:30 pm to three am.
The web site says safety guards are usually not armed and won’t enter college property, however are educated in de-escalation and CPR. They have to additionally earn a California “Guard Card” from the California Bureau of Safety and Investigative Providers, which requires them to clear background checks from the California Division of Justice and the FBI.
Though this system is not going to proceed past this weekend, mother and father hope they’ll be capable to persuade the college to take extra motion.
“Whereas we is not going to be extending our in-person security pilot past March 23, we will definitely proceed to stress the administration at UC Berkeley to guard college students from violence,” Sagar Jethani, president of SafeBearers, instructed SFGate.
The transfer comes amid an increase in violent crime within the native space, which is infamous as one of the vital left-wing locations in the complete nation.
In line with the Berkeley Scanner, robberies elevated by 29 % throughout 2023, property crimes elevated by 58 % and sexual crimes remained about the identical.
Regardless of its repute as a breeding floor for leftist ideology with an entire disregard for freedom of expression, UC Berkeley stays one of the vital prestigious universities within the English-speaking world.
Its most well-known alumni embody Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.