UT San Antonio ceased updating its previous Daily Crime Log and Fire Report as of April 21 at 8 a.m. The university now relies upon the private vendor ARMS to showcase on-campus crimes and maintain compliance with the Clery Act, which requires universities to report campus crime data.
“Our college and university customers use the Clery Mapping Portal in place of the required Clery Daily Log,” reads an excerpt from the Welcome to ARMS Mapping Portal webpage. “ARMS automatically collects required fields from your Clery reportable incidents and posts the data on an automated web portal.”
ARMS’ ARMS’ UT San Antonio Mapping Portal System contains a “Dashboard,” “Daily Report” and “Incident Map.”
As of 9 a.m. on April 27, the Dashboard depicted multiple bar charts, pie charts, a line graph and a data set. None of the visualization tools had titles, making it unclear what the data represented. As of 11 a.m. on April 27, the figures are no longer viewable.
The Daily Report lists crimes that occurred on and off UT San Antonio’s campuses within the past 60-70 days. The crimes cannot be filtered by campus location with the webpage’s filter function. However, they can be filtered by crime type and date range. The Daily Report can be downloaded as a CSV, but it cannot be downloaded as a PDF; an error occurs, which takes the user to a blank webpage when attempting to do so.
The Incident Map displays a Google Map that pinpoints the exact location of the crimes from the Daily Report. Main Campus, Park West, University Heights, Downtown Campus and the Institute of Texan Cultures are highlighted to distinguish university property from the rest of San Antonio. Different types of crime have an icon to represent them, but the map’s legend does not display each icon and its meaning. Users must select each icon to view the crime’s designation. A number icon is used when more than one crime has occurred in the same location.
The third-party vendor, ARMS, is a public safety management platform established in 1988. It advertises its services to higher education, municipalities, hospitals and other industries. Implementation of the vendor’s services can take between 60-90 days.
“No matter your location, our solutions are ready to streamline operations, ensure compliance, and enhance public safety,” claims the ARMS Supported Regions webpage.
ARMS Support Center cannot be accessed through the university’s Mapping Portal System. New users are prompted to sign up and create an account with ARMS to access its Support Center. Alternatively, they could call the support team at (800) 776-6783 or reach out via email at [email protected].
