The unofficial online home for fans of the UAB Blazers. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

I'm going to put this here because I don't want to distract from folks wanting to talk about our teams.

I have a son living on campus and I am very concerned about the increase in crime. Two nights in a row with armed robberies on campus should be a red flag to somebody. Security needs to be beefed up at UAB and it needs to happen yesterday. I've had more B alerts this Fall semester than the entire year my oldest lived at UAB (two years ago).

I believe if you are on academic scholarship or an athlete at UAB, you are required to live on campus your freshman year. If UAB wants to continue to recruit and retain top students and athletes, security on campus must be addressed. Every inch of campus needs security cameras and 24 hour foot patrols. A few UAB police cruising around at night is not cutting it.

Sorry for the rant but getting woke up around 3 am two nights in a row with B-alert texts has this set of UAB parents very concerned.

The old saying nothing good ever happens after midnight is fairly accurate. I understand that armed robberies are worrisome, but in this second case it wasn't even a uab student involved. Any college is going to have crime, but those in cities are a little more susceptible to this type of thing happening. The big thing here is nobody was hurt. A college campus is a really large area to try and cover with cameras, and a lot of people don't want cameras watching every minute of their lives. I'm glad your son wasn't harmed, and hope uab does something to ease your concerns.

Because my wife's daughter attended Montevallo years ago, we still get alert texts whenever a criminal action is reported. We got such a text this past week. UAB is just larger, not unique.

It's probably just that UAB has gotten much better at getting these alerts out. Wait for the stats to come out to see if there was an actual increase in crime.

Two things: Last I heard the goal of the UAB police was that if you took a position on campus you should see a UAB police patrol roughly once a minute. That's hard to improve on unless you paper the campus with cops. Two, if you are walking the streets downtown at 3 a.m., your chances of being a victim of crime are higher. That's not meant as a blame the victim, it is meant as a simple common sense observation.

You might consider turning off the autocalls to your home for B-Alerts. We did.

Keep in mind that robbery and such money related criminal activities are "free enterprise" driven. They are mostly drawn to where the perpetrator believes there is the greatest chance of a suitable "score" in money terms. When opportunity meets drive, crime happens. Since there is a large amount of publicity about how much college costs, the criminal might decide a college campus is the place to go for that suitable score. The risk to the victim is that the criminal's expectations of score may not be met and they will take it out on the victim in violence.

I'm guessing the UAB Police are stretched thin, since they are still providing round-the-clock body guard service to Ray Watts, who remains afraid of his own shadow.

(12-23-2015 08:20 PM)Grammar-Nazi Wrote:  I'm guessing the UAB Police are stretched thin, since they are still providing round-the-clock body guard service to Ray Watts, who remains afraid of his own shadow.

Your entry reminds me of a Johnny Carson quip after several crimes on NY subways got the mayor to order a hundred additional police officers onto the subway trains. His quip was "Now if you can manage to get on that subway car, you will feel very safe".

Do yourself a favor and un-sign up for the B-Alerts.

I've got a kid on campus who I trust to be where she needs to be and when she needs to be there, and sleep just fine at night.

Now we have the JSU QB being arrested for domestic violence. If he hopes to play in the NFL, it might be wise to avoid that kind of item on your record since the league has suspended several players for that particular offense and are not likely to ask for more troubles from new players..