UK Police Chief Joe Monroe shows off his department's new security operations center. A wall of screens track drone operations, real-time bodycam footage, power outages, and data from a wide array of sources.
Those numbers are going to go up.UK Police Chief Joe Monroe, speaking on sexual assault reporting
It's this new system — with more than 5,000 cameras on campus — that helped UK Police quickly assess whether a threat reported at the W.T. Young Library at the start of the semester was real or not. It turned out to be a hoax, one of several seen at schools across the country.
"(Officers) were able to pull up those cameras in the library and see that everybody was acting normally during the alleged shooting," Monroe explains. "This type of information is really a game-changer when it comes to our response."
But one area of focus has much more to do with the human element, specifically eliminating roadblocks to the reporting of sexual assault.
Monroe says the department is putting resources back into what's known as the Green Dot Program, which encourages people to shift from being "passive bystanders to active participants" to eliminate violence, offering practical tools and strategies for intervention.
And if those efforts are successful, Monroe says he expects that to be reflected in the department's regular security reports.
"You're going to see the increase the more we do education, the more we break down barriers. Those numbers are going to go up, unfortunately, because people are feeling comfortable coming and reporting it," he says. "We want to break that '90 percent underreported' down to very few. We want all reports because we want to hold everybody accountable for what has happened."
In the meantime, police are still getting up-to-speed on a host of new capabilities, including immediate communication with bodycam-outfitted officers in the field to drones that utilize infrared technology.
UK Police also plan on holding regular press briefings every month.