Campus Security
All Palm Beach County ordinances and Florida laws apply to the campuses and facilities of Palm Beach State College. The College has adopted policies, rules, and regulations to provide security for the students, staff, visitors, and buildings. Campus Safety officers are stationed at all campus locations.
Campus Safety can be contacted at one centralized number @ 561-868-3600
Campus Crime Awareness
Jeanne Clery was 19 years old when she was raped and murdered in her college dormitory. Her parents, Connie and Howard Clery, could not have known the danger she was in; standards for campus crime reporting simply did not exist in 1986. In compliance with the Federal Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990, The Clery Act, is a consumer protection law that aims to provide transparency around campus crime policy and statistics. In order to comply with Clery Act requirements, colleges and universities must understand what the law entails, where their responsibilities lie, and what they can do to actively foster campus safety. The Palm Beach State College’s Security Department has compiled the following Clery Act requirements:
- Annual Security Reports
- The Clery Act requires colleges and universities that receive federal funding to disseminate a public annual security report (ASR) to employees and students every October 1st. This ASR must include statistics of campus crime for the preceding 3 calendar years, plus details about efforts taken to improve campus safety.
- ASRs must also include policy statements regarding (but not limited to) crime reporting, campus facility security and access, law enforcement authority, incidence of alcohol and drug use, and the prevention of/response to sexual assault, domestic or dating violence, and stalking.
- Campus Crime Statistics
- Institutions of higher education must include four distinct categories of crime in their ASR crime data:
- Criminal Offenses
- Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Offenses
- Hate Crimes
- Arrests and Referrals for Disciplinary Action
- Daily Crime Logs
- Wherever crimes occur, campus police and public safety departments must maintain a daily crime log of all reported crimes that fall within their jurisdiction. This crime log must be made available to the public during daily business hours and is on the website, see pbsc.edu/Safety.
- Timely Warnings
- When a crime covered by the Clery Act occurs, campus officials are required to evaluate if there is a serious or ongoing threat to the campus community to determine if a timely warning needs to be issued to all staff and students.
- In the event of an immediate, significant danger to the health or safety campus community (e.g., weather, disease outbreak), campus officials may issue an emergency notification. This notification can include the entire campus or be limited to a specific area deemed to be at risk.
- Sexual Assault & Prevention Info
- Board Policy 6Hx-18-3.49, Sexual Predator or Offender Information Notification/Publication was adopted on March 11, 2003. This policy assures the college is following federal mandates. The FDLE link is provided by the college to search for possible offenders by name (first and last), city, or zip code. There is an additional feature on the FDLE web page (under the University search function) that shows current students that are listed as offenders, by campus.
These requirements for The Clery Act can be found at pbsc.edu/Safety.