Police at the University of New Hampshire this month are rolling out a smartphone app that will allow dispatchers to circle an area on a map, such as a dormitory, and send emergency alerts to everyone in that area who signed up for the app.

Southern New Hampshire University has installed key card access to dorms, covering more than 90 percent of its residential students, to keep out strangers and track who was inside if a crime occurred.

And Manchester Community College last year installed 80 cameras, blanketing nearly all of its campus with video surveillance to look for suspicious behavior.

Technology is providing another layer of security over the tens of thousands of students who will descend on college campuses across the state in the coming weeks.

“It's just good crime-prevention business,” UNH Police Chief Paul Dean said Friday. “Social media and technology is primarily the way that young people have been brought up in their lives and indoctrinated in.”

This month, Dean will officially roll out CrimePush, a smartphone app for reporting crime that was operational for part of last semester. “If a crime takes place in front of you, you can send an email” to the police dispatch, he said.

“If you're there and you're taking a picture of a fight or some car hit somebody, you shoot a picture or video and it goes right to the dispatch center, and we have the information immediately,” he said.

Dean said he's also introducing an app from Ping4, a Nashua-based technology startup, that allows a dispatcher to “use the tool on an alert screen to circle a section of the campus” and send a message to anybody who had downloaded that app who is within that area, he said.

Manchester police have used Ping4 for months.

“We will send out different updates, whether it be on the lookout (for somebody under suspicion) or for different upcoming events,” Manchester police Sgt. Craig Rousseau said. “We are hoping to use it more as more people sign up for it.”

Virginia Tech's lessons

At MCC, officials spent $220,000 to install 80 video cameras to cover 95 percent of the campus.

Security officers can monitor up to 25 cameras at one time. “If an incident happens, we can go back and see what took place,” said Jeff Nyhan, director of safety for the three-member department.

Nyhan said security officials used the 2007 mass-murder shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech “as a catalyst to really push the need for the project.”

Jim Winn, president of the New Hampshire Campus Public Safety Association, said one thing that emerged from a review of the handling of the Virginia Tech shootings was a requirement for colleges and universities to develop a method to notify students of a crisis.

“Some have a siren. Some have text alerting,” said Winn, director of public safety at SNHU. The school uses text alerts and is updating computers used by faculty and staff to receive alerts that will flash on their screens.

“What really has changed since Virginia Tech is the emphasis on crisis management and the availability of training ...,” said Winn, who heads the department of 15 full-time public safety officers.

Amanda Guthorn Warman, director of campus safety at Keene State College, said she had recommended a notification system two years prior to the Virginia Tech shooting, and the requests for proposals went out coincidentally on the day of the shootings.

“Technology and emergency notification is one of the pieces that came out of Virginia Tech,” she said. “Another piece was this real heightened awareness of students and parents that college is not a place within a bubble that is going to protect you from the rest of the world.”

Keene State's notification system, which includes a siren and loudspeaker on the gym's exterior as well as notices sent via text, email and phone, was used a month ago when the area was under a tornado warning.

UNH's Dean recalled an assault a few years back in front of Stoke Hall that sent one man to the hospital with severe injuries. The school issued a description of the attacker through an alert on its emergency notification system. Within minutes, a student saw a man run into a dorm room and tell his friends he had beaten up someone. The man, who wasn't a student, was reported to police and arrested.

Warman, who also is co-director of the New Hampshire Campus Safety Academy, said the academy holds annual programs in Keene involving 55 to 60 hours of in-classroom and hands-on training. About half its participants are from outside the state, from as far away as Iowa, she said.

Officers with guns

Only campus police at UNH and Plymouth State University have the power to arrest people, Winn said, adding he wasn't aware of any other campuses using armed security.

Keene State employs its own campus security, composed of 15 full-time and five part-time staff as well as up to 20 students. It also uses a private security firm to assist with parking and traffic for several events, including student move-in time, commencement, and the annual pumpkin festival, Warman said.

At Keene State, “any crime that's committed is also reported to the Keene police,” she said. “They would come and take a report. Many times, we'll do the investigation either together or concurrently, so depending on the seriousness of it, it may require a lot of conversation, so we're not stepping on each other's toes.”

Paul Kopreski, UNH's deputy police chief, said the university employs 17 full-time and 12 part-time officers and occasionally hires officers from other communities for events such as the opening of school.

Dean said having officers who have the same policing powers as those who work for cities and towns aids with safety. “It is vital for the safety of the community, and I think parents feel comfortable having sworn officers there,” Dean said. He praised the relationship between his department and Durham's.

“I call it a conspiracy of care between the university system and the town's safety system,” he said.

But the UNH chief said he isn't ready to trade in his officers for cellphones.

“I still needs the cops to go do the footwork and solve crime,” he said.
mcousineau@unionleader.com