Email tree links students and police
By MELISSA M. L. WALKER
Officer Dennis Grilli of the Santa Clara Police Department is dedicated to ensuring students' safety on and off campus.
Grilli created an email tree that will relay important safety issues to Santa Clara students.At the beginning of each school year, Grilli visits off-campus student houses to introduce himself and let students know what will be expected of them as far as conduct is concerned. This year he made an extra trip after a few incidents gave him an idea of how to extend the lines of communication between the police department and students.
"This year we had an incident that involved a prowler and a peeper, that appeared as if he had actually made two or three trips [to one house]," Grilli said.
After catching the peeping tom in the act, and dealing with other incidentsÃlike a cat burglar who stole souvenirs from a house while students sleptÃGrilli realized he wanted to do something more.
"I really started to think about how you could set up a line of communication between the police and the off-campus housing," Grilli said.
He decided to go back to off-campus student residences and compile a list of email addresses to be used when incidents that effect student safety occur. So far, he has a list of 68 different email addresses. An attempt was made to get at least one email address per student residence, according to Grilli.
After receiving approval and support from the police department, Grilli went ahead with his plan. A database of the email addresses is set up and the line of communication is ready for use.So far, only one message of information and one test message have been sent to off-campus students, but students seem ready and supportive of Grilli's email information chain.
"Much of what Grilli had to say in his email proved to me that he cares about the safety of our school," senior Mark Stege said.
But Grilli isn't satisfied.
He wants to make his already existing list more complete next year. He also wants students who live on campus to be informed when certain incidents that may affect them occur.
"Next year, what I want to set up is a list of all the off campus residents for the email bank, as well as all the email addresses for the RA's in the dorms so we could communicate directly with them the same way," Grilli said.
If a line of communication is set up with the Resident Assistants, then important information can be posted throughout the resident halls, according to Grilli.
Senior Debbie Zabala, who is currently a RA likes the idea of receiving information from the police department.
"As a female I am very concerned about the safety of myself and my residents," Zabala said. "I think this will make everyone more aware."
Junior Matt Bridge thinks that the information would help with students' overall well being."I would like to think that if we received these updates on a regular basis, we could avoid unnecessary panic," Bridge said.
With the new system of communication, SCPD is able to shed light on situations that could cause panic in students while at the same time reminding students to be careful.
"I'm not saying this area's crime riddenÃit's not," Grilli said. "It's just beneficial to have correct information, not what the rumor mill is generating."