TACIR staff urges TBI to include crimes within half-mile of campuses; recommends more call recording and public reporting of Title IX complaints

Staff member (Speaker 4) presented the commission's final report on emergency communications on college and university campuses and asked the commission to approve the draft. The report, undertaken after direction from Senate Bill 2827 and House Bill 2729 of the 112th General Assembly, recommends several changes intended to improve campus safety reporting and documentation.

"The commission recommends that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation develop a process to include statistics for crimes reported within 1 half mile of each college or university campus in its annual crime on campus reports," Speaker 4 said, describing a revised third recommendation added after feedback from TBI. Staff explained that although campus and non-campus law-enforcement location data make such compilation possible, TBI currently lacks a system to do so and that any new process should avoid double-counting or compliance errors.

The report also recommends encouraging colleges and universities to record and retain emergency-call recordings by providing additional funding to help institutions obtain or improve emergency call-recording systems. Staff updated the report's section on the costs and features of call-recording software and records-management systems, and added material on campus climate surveys and how increases in reporting may raise recorded incident totals while improving visibility of victimization.

Commission members raised procedural questions about who is responsible for deciding when an incident is escalated to local law enforcement. Staff replied that reporting varies by whether campus security is a sworn law-enforcement agency, but schools are required to enter incidents into the TBI system (TBIRDS) and maintain crime logs, which then feed into TBI reporting. Staff also noted the federal Clery Act requires publishing campus statistics; Tennessee law currently makes the state reports available upon request but does not explicitly require online posting, which the report recommends changing to mirror federal practice.

A commissioner asked whether a recent Belmont incident would be captured; staff said that if the incident was within the one-half mile radius it would be included. Another question about campus 'blue boxes' (emergency call boxes) prompted staff to say the report did not include a recommendation to install call boxes but noted that calls routed to campus police—rather than 911—are less likely to be recorded on many campuses, which supports the recommendation on call-recording systems.

Speaker 1 announced a motion "by Crawford" to accept the report and the commission approved the report by voice vote; the transcript records only 'Aye' responses and no roll-call tally. The report cites interviews (including a quote from Austin Peay police chief Samuel Williams), TBI feedback, and comparative examples from Louisiana, Maryland and New York regarding publication of Title IX statistics. Funding amounts, implementation timelines and specific vendor recommendations were not specified in the excerpt.

The commission also discussed tentative January meeting dates and other business after approving the report.