Student Association President Ghufran Salih met with Department of Public Safety Chief Bobby Maldonado and Patrol Commander Kathy Pabis on Tuesday to discuss DPS’ role in the Saturday morning assault in the 800 block of Ackerman Avenue.

DPS previously said a woman struck three students with what appeared to be a pistol at about 12:40 a.m. on Saturday. A statement that circulated on social media among Syracuse University students Monday accused campus and city police of mishandling the assault.

Salih and SA’s Director of DPS Relations Kailee Vick were present at the meeting, Salih said. Vick is also a staff writer for The Daily Orange.

DPS was unable to elaborate on the assault in its emails sent early Saturday morning due to the ongoing investigation that the Syracuse Police Department is conducting, Salih said.

DPS’ jurisdiction does not extend to public property or buildings owned or controlled by student organizations, according to its website. Campus police officers can only patrol off-campus houses as private citizens, Salih said.

If DPS elaborated on the incident to the student body, SPD’s current investigation of the assault could have been compromised, Salih added.

Salih said Vick and she emphasized that DPS should have been more clear to students as to why it couldn’t elaborate on the assault.

“Definitely there was a lot more clarity (from the meeting),” Salih said. “I do think that the statement that they put out was very confusing to a lot of people, especially myself after seeing what’s going on on social media.”

Academic Affairs Chair Ryan Golden introduced a bill during Monday’s SA Assembly meeting that called on the university to “recognize the racial implications and racially charged motives of this assault and commit to investigate this crime with that in mind.”

The bill also said it’s a common occurrence for racially-charged criminal activity to go unnoticed by DPS.

“It’s difficult because I know there are policies in place that restrict them from talking about it,” SA Vice President Kyle Rosenblum said on Tuesday, before he had heard about the content of the DPS meeting. “Whatever DPS couldn’t cover in their email because of policy restrictions, it was the university’s job to follow up with another email clarifying those issues.”

Salih also said during Monday’s assembly meeting that she was working to get DPS in contact with students who were affected by the assault. Salih learned during the meeting that DPS and SU reached out to students that were affected by the assault, and that those students are now in contact with SPD, she said. She said she was not told what happened with the students past that point.

SA has also made efforts to contact victims of the assault, but Salih said she also wanted to give students time to heal.

“We want to make sure that students have time to process and time to heal, because they were made to feel unsafe in their home,” Salih said.

— Asst. Copy Editor Natalie Rubio-Licht contributed reporting to this story

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Published on February 12, 2019 at 11:29 pm

Contact Gabe: gkstern@syr.edu | @gabestern326