The cities of Bryan and College Station have seen an increase in crime in the last year.
Bryan Police Department saw an overall increase of crime by two percent, while crime in College Station increased by 19 percent.
Though BPD was expecting a much larger increase in crime due to the education of community members, they experienced more service calls with about one percent actually being criminal activity.
"We knew there'd be an increase of crimes reported," Officer Jason B. James of Bryan Police Department said.
What he didn't expect was the increase of crime to be such a small number.
"When Chief Morrow came, he created the Neighborhood Enforcement Team to have direct contact with the public," James said.
He attributes the increase of reported crimes to service calls made by the community.
"We want [the community] to report more crimes so we can reduce it in the future. We're trying to build partnership with the public so they call in," James said.
The goal was to target repeat offenders to reduce crime. He said there are monthly meetings about the habitual criminals to try to target them in order to reduce the crime in the community.
There are other ways that have been implemented to reduce criminal activity, James said.
"We're trying to educate the public. An officer educates them on how to prevent crime," he said.
The Bryan Police Department has even gone so far as to implement a program called VIPER (Visibility, Intelligence, Partnerships, Education, Resourcing) to help with the communities and reduction of crime.
"We're trying to teach students to not leave their books, iPods or GPS in their cars and to lock their cars," James said.
Officer James said the best way to prevent crimes from occurring is by not giving a criminal an opportunity to steal personal belongings.
"Just stop and look around," said Officer Rhonda Seaton of CSPD. "A lot of times people get out of their vehicles and look to where they're going. Instead of focusing on your apartment door, look around."
She said service calls are what assist the police department with catching criminals.
"You've seen people in your complex. You know what's normal, but if you notice something suspicious, call us," Seaton said.
She said the service calls to check out an apartment complex or any kind of suspicious activity and finding nothing wouldn't bother CSPD at all.
"Who knows? We may find a burglar," Seaton said. "The fact that people are calling us just helps us make it more safe. We can't do it by ourselves. We have to have the citizens, especially students, because they're the ones coming in at odd hours."
Seaton said the reason College Station seemed to be hit so heavily is because criminals view College Station as a target-rich environment. "They do come to town to prey on the students," she said.
The University Police encourage students to take different actions than just calling in incidents, though calls are encouraged as well.
"It is a good idea to keep a list of your personal property including a log of the make, model and serial number of the items, particularly electronics and bicycles," said Officer Kristi Hosea of UPD.
"It is also a good idea to engrave your driver's license number on the items as well. This enables law enforcement to automatically connect the property in question to the owner during the initial contact with the suspect," she said.
Officer Hosea said students can make an appointment with UPD's Crime Prevention Unit to have items engraved at no cost. The Crime Prevention Unit's number is 979.862.8125.
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