Thanks Penn, for putting your students first. Clearly armed robbers right outside a college dorm is not a safety concern.

How many incidents will it take to get Maureen Rush removed from her post because of her blatant disregard for student safety?

I’m starting to worry that it will take a serious injury to a student before Maureen Rush places student safety above university safety rankings.

I’m not defending DPS’s track record on sending UPennAlerts — they probably should have issued an alert, considering part of Fisher Hassenfeld extends to that area; there’s only a metal fence, which wouldn’t prevent any stray bullets from injuring students.

There are two issues I have with the commentators above: 1) Maureen Rush is personally responsible for DPS, but can’t possibly make every single decision about issuing alerts.

More importantly, 2) Philadelphia Police were pursuing the suspects, AND the robbery occurred on the other side of the city. During the pursuit, there is no reason to alert Penn students. After the arrest, there is also no reason to alert Penn students. In between the pursuit and the arrest, for the brief moment the action is happening on campus, it would take some extraordinary system for Philadelphia Police to communicate their exact location for a text alert to be issued — I’m sure sending out texts is the last thing on their mind for a non-Penn police officer.

Sorry, but this is not the best case to demand a UPennAlert.

Finally, common sense. Too many people demand that an alert be sent out without the slightest understanding of what the system is truly designed to alert us about.

This incident didn’t merit an alert. Even if the Penn Police were involved in the chase (I don’t know if they were, but I did see a Penn cop arrest one person), there is no practical way for them to have issued a meaningful alert. Once again, a dangerous situation was mitigated within minutes-a time frame which would not allow for an alert-through the expert action of two police agencies.

Frankly, we as students and members of the Penn community should be thankful Maureen Rush has assembled such a professional team. Instead of castigating her and DPS as a whole, we should focus on the outstanding work DPS does on our behalf every day; these officers run towards situations that 99% of us would break our asses fleeing from. And it wouldn’t hurt to occasionally thank a cop, either.

I feel like this reminds me of last year when I was awoken from bed by what sounded liek a car crash outside my window, a half dozen police cars speeding in and screeching to a halt, and I and proceeded to look outside my GROUND FLOOR window at people diving off Locust Walk into bushes to avoid what sounded like firecrackers going off continuously, which turned out to be the police fatally gunning down an armed carjacker.

To be honest though, leave the Penn Police in place, as she’s done a pretty adequate job protecting students (though last year’s carjacking did end up in a bullet penetrating a dorm room window where thankfully the student wasn’t sleeping, word of which got out to parents in time for Penn Previews).

However Maureen Rush or whoever her Public Relations director is should be fired. It’s blatantly obvious that Penn students have HUGE concerns as to whether or not they’ll be alerted of unsafe situations on campus. Even if no one gets harmed, the mental damage of not feeling safe walking around the campus you call home can be debilitating.

Alerts are meant to warn about active DANGER. Once a situation is resolved, there is no danger. If a situation is resolved in minutes, there isn’t going to be enough time to issue an alert.

It isn’t meant to be a news ticker informing about what has happenED, but a warning system about what is happenING.

I don’t know the ins and outs of the PennAlert system, however, I live in the neighborhood and I try to use a common sense approach to avoiding danger. If I see 10 cop cars, a firetruck, and an ambulance (as I did last night) and three or four blocks are being blocked by the police, I pretty much assume there’s some danger in the situation. If I see one cop car pulling over a driver in the middle of the day, I assume the chance for danger is pretty low. I think this is the best alert system and you can use it anywhere!

according to reliable sources, the target of the armed robbery was actually Tabard lunch boxes, which turned out to be filled with copies of Howard Stern’s ‘Private Parts’ movie

There should have been an alert. It says the chase reached campus around 11pm, and the arrest was made around 11:30. That’s an entire half hour. If they had settled the issue in a couple of minutes, I would very much agree with @M-Rush_fail. Unfortunately, this is not the case. I really don’t think it would have been extraordinary (or even asking too much) to communicate the fact that three armed men are running around over the course of half an hour.

To the people who say that there wasn’t ongoing danger, I’m seriously laughing at you. 30 minutes between an armed robbery pursuit ending on our campus and the suspects’ apprehension isn’t a large enough time slot to send out an alert? Police officers chasing an armed man with guns drawn right outside my dorm window isn’t dangerous? I could actually hear through my window, a police officer saying to somebody, “You should get out of here. It’s not safe right to be here right now.” If the guys with the guns are saying that it’s not safe, I’d imagine it’s not safe.

The way people on my hall saw it, there was the money from the robbery that was strewn all over hamilton walk. Who’s to say that their plan didn’t involve meeting another guy (that was potentially armed) on or around our campus to drop off money to? Wouldn’t that possibility be pretty dangerous? All I’m saying is that the police themselves said there’s immediate danger. They were still searching for things even after they caught the guys. Sure it’s good advice to avoid the situation if you see all of those police cars, firetrucks, etc. However, what about the students living in Fisher Hassenfeld? Parts of FH (Leidy, Brooks, C’28) are right next to where the arrest happened- and they aren’t connected to other parts of the quad without going outside. Students like me who live in McKean were right by the scene, really close to the street (38th). If we “avoided” the situation by leaving, going to another part of the quad, how would we know it was safe to go back again? No UPennAlert was issued, even after it was over.

Do I feel unsafe on campus? No. Should DPS issue an alert in situations like this? Hell yeah

@Jake Albano—Before you rant on about this 30 minute time lapse, try and recall what time it was when you were looking out of your window. And money wasn’t “strewn all over Hamilton Walk.” The police were looking around for any additional money, but the bulk of it was on the suspect, which they waited until detectives/forensics was on the scene to take pictures of it and then pick it up off of the ground, right next to where they handcuffed the suspect. From what I saw they looked all over the place, but found money in perhaps one other spot, off of the walk and in the landscaping in front of Leidy Labs.

I can only speak for two of the arrests, one of which I witnessed directly outside of my window in Fisher Hassenfeld at 11:00pm on the dot, and the other which my friend who lives on Baltimore near 39th saw right after the car accident occurred, so at or before 11:00pm.

While Penn Public Safety does not always use the PennAlert system properly, this was certainly not an incident where an alert was necessary. As someone else mentioned, by the time an alert would have gone out, the incident was long under control.

To all of you up in arms about the lack of alerts:
how many penn students were injured? None
How many of the bad guys were caught? All
That leads me to think the person making the decisions about policing are doing a good job. It’s keeping all of the second guessers with enough time to make stupid comments.