Try telling them crime is falling

Jack Stollstei-mer, former Safe School Advocate whose office was eliminated by the state after eight years in August.

What are the problems with the way student crime and violence is reported?

It’s a voluntary system where all this information is unaudited. We didn’t have the power to go in and say this is wrong or this is underreported. As a former prosecutor, I know a little about crime reporting. The fact it’s going up or down a few percentage points each year doesn’t make any difference. The raw numbers is more staggering. What happened in 05-06 [when crime spiked dramatically], they simply weren’t reporting properly before. I never really trust the full statistics anyway. There are some schools that just won’t report.