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STLToday
October 27, 2014
Sweeping changes to St. Louis Community College’s approach to campus safety can be traced back 18 months to an ambush of a young woman in a school bathroom.
The attacker, Jevon Mallory, admitted in court Friday to sneaking up behind fellow student Blythe Grupe last year and choking her in a restroom on the Meramec campus in Kirkwood. Mallory, 20, of St. John, pleaded guilty of first-degree assault and faces up to 15 years in prison when he is sentenced Dec. 12.
Mallory was released by campus police within hours of the attack on Grupe, despite his admission that he was attempting to “withdraw her from life” and that he attacked her to “vent his rage.” Officials didn’t alert the campus to the threat, and addressed the assault only after Grupe, then 19, went to the press for help.
A scathing report commissioned by the college’s board of trustees said the way the incident had been handled showed “a lack in leadership and management from key personnel at the district and campus levels.”
Changes in leadership, policies and police protection that followed the bungled response have made their campuses safer than ever, community college officials say.
“Safety on our campuses has really been strengthened after that event occurred,” said Dennis Michaelis, who was appointed interim chancellor after the attack. “The board has taken this very, very seriously — and I don’t mean kind of seriously. I mean very seriously.”
A study of campus police procedures commissioned by the college’s board this summer recommended several ways to improve. As a result, Michaelis said, the college has hired a new public safety director who will start Nov. 3 and oversee all campus police departments.
Pam McIntyre, president of the Meramec and Wildwood campuses, said the college has learned from past mistakes and implemented several new safety policies. They include:
• Equipping campus buildings with dozens of indoor surveillance cameras.
• Improving compliance with the Clery Act that requires colleges and universities to disclose information regarding a range of crimes if they take place on campus or in the surrounding neighborhoods.
• Adding panic buttons to all classroom and office telephones that will alert police dispatchers to the location of an emergency.
• Holding routine evacuation drills on campus each semester.
• Implementing an alert system that broadcasts emergency messages via telephone, email and text messages.
• Hosting forums to discuss safety with students and staff each semester.
McIntyre said that if a similar attack happened today, the college’s response would be more “immediate” and officials would better communicate with the victim and campus at large.
“We would do all of those things where we could have done a better job” in last year’s attack, she said.
