Security manager for The University of the West Indies (The UWI) Mona campus retired Assistant Commissioner of Police Marlon Nesbeth is promising students a safer time as they resume classes for the new academic year.

“We’ll be working together to make you, Pelicans, the safest bunch of students this academic year. Last year, we had challenges. We overcame them. We put systems in place. This year, we are on a good platform. You won’t be having these challenges because we are here to protect you, to safeguard you,” Nesbeth told students attending day two of a general orientation session at the university recently.

Nesbeth said through the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s (JCF) Mona police, the Campus police, and King Alarm guards, aided by a 24-hour surveillance system students should be much safer.

“We asked the JCF to provide some other layers and they did. So they traverse the wider areas of campus that we understand are susceptible to issues. The campus police also does patrol but more importantly, they manage the campus security operations to the extent they are there. Then we have King Alarm and they are the guards you see outside the tent and across campus.

“Otherwise, they are mostly static but they too also have response capabilities. They do patrols to make you safe. You our students are also a critical layer. So we added a fourth layer because here we want to have you understanding your own security, being responsible for it but also if you can relate with what happens in the wider communities where we have neighbourhood watch programmes, we want you to see yourself in that light,” Nesbeth said.

In noting that the 650-acre campus is covered by surveillance, he said while there have been ‘breaks’ in some areas the police, “are working on that presently to pull out what the problems are and to make sure that they work as it should”.

“But this system, the CCTV cameras are monitored 24 hours daily by our campus security police through their monitoring system. They sit, they look at the cameras and they don’t look to pick up what is happening but they look to pick up possibilities. So they see suspicious persons coming or vehicles on the campus, they will cause the patrols — and we have the varying layers as I explained — to respond,” Nesbeth told students.

He also issued a warning to those students intending to experience Kingston’s entertainment and night-life.

“Some of you students will be going on excursions, you’re going to clubs. But some of these areas, these surroundings, these establishment, pose different types of dangers. And I would want to think that it poses a lot of dangers to the females more than anyone else. The fact is these males out there will be seeking to prey on you when you go to these places. It’s like a feeding tree. I have heard stories,” said the former senior cop.

“When you do go to those places, you go in groups. Make sure there’s a designated person who won’t be drinking too much, who will be seeing to your well-being. Make sure you have your plans in place as how you’ll traverse to and fro. So you’re leaving the club, you don’t want somebody to be offering a ride who you don’t know. You have to put those things in place. So we are urging that you do that. Think seriously about your safety like that. Asking that you look at target hardening around yourself as we call it,” added Nesbeth who spent more than 40 years in the JCF.

He was appointed as campus security manager in February amidst media reports, and social media outrage, from students sharing safety concerns about the Mona campus.

Over the years several incidents on the campus have led to concerns about the safety of students.

In February of 2020, Jasmine Dean, a 22-year-old visually impaired student at the university, went missing while waiting for a bus at the campus’ back gate.

In May of 2022, a female student was sexually assaulted in a restroom in the vicinity of the Annex and Senate Buildings.

Last year a 25-year-old security guard was removed from campus after it is alleged that he attempted to abduct and rape an eight-year-old girl.

University student Matthew Hyde in 2024 pleaded guilty to assaulting his ex-girlfriend in his dorm room in 2023.

Hyde allegedly held his ex-girlfriend against her will in his room on a block of the hall for at least three days, during which time he repeatedly beat her and burned her all over her body with a clothing iron. He has been since sentenced to serve 13 years behind bars for that crime.

In February this year the university confirmed that several students were robbed near ATMs on the campus.

An undated security advisory posted on the university’s website referenced an “upsurge in stolen motor vehicles” and said persons working or visiting the university campus and the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) have been victims of motor vehicle theft over the past six months.

It said further analysis of the data revealed that particular make and model motor vehicles are targeted and are at extremely high risk of being stolen while parked.

Vehicles identified as being at high risk for being stolen were Toyota Probox, Toyota Axio, Toyota Wish,Toyota Fielder, Nissan AD Wagon, Honda Fit, and Honda Stream.

The advisory said vulnerability of these vehicles lay in their starting mechanism especially those manufactured before 2018.

“These vehicles are usually key started and they are not fitted with microchips. The thieves usually watch the drivers of these vehicles and as soon they are out of view of their vehicle, they smash any of the windows to gain access to the inside of the vehicle where they quickly ‘hot wire’ the starter and steal the vehicle within seconds,” it said.

The advisory noted that while security does a profile of these vehicles and tries to track them while on campus, the sheer size of the campus and the numerous parking locations make it difficult to keep all the vehicles safe adding that owners and drivers have a responsibility to install safety devices on their vehicles.

The main entrance to The UWI Mona campus