Stafford argued that information disseminated in logs—including the date, time and location of an incident, along with a brief description—is enough to promote awareness of campus crime.

“I believe that this basic information is sufficient to notify the community about types of crimes that are occurring on campus,” Stafford said, adding that campus police must also inform the campus when serious crime threatens the community. “The actual police records do not need to be distributed publicly for that to happen.”

HUPD Chief Francis D. “Bud” Riley said he has never kept information vital to campus security under wraps.

“We’ve never covered up anything on campus in my entire tenure here,” Riley said last month. “It was never anybody’s intent to hide anything.”

Howard K. Clery III, executive director of Security on Campus, said HUPD should be held to the same standard as Cambridge and Boston police. Those police departments also respond to some incidents at Harvard, and their complete reports detailing many serious crimes at Harvard are available.

Security on Campus, an advocacy organization that supports public knowledge of campus police procedures, was founded in 1987 by Clery’s father when his sister Jeanne was raped and murdered by a fellow student at Lehigh University.

Clery said his organization believes that everyone benefits from information about campus crime.

“The school can do a better job by knowing what’s happening where,” Clery said. “When you keep it secret, it makes perpetrators think they can get away with everything.”

Around the Region

Most other area schools have not faced similar controversies.

Police officials from Tufts, MIT, Northeastern, the University of Massachusetts at Boston and Boston College (BC) all said they publish the daily logs required by the Clery Act but do not release incident reports.

At all schools except BC, officials said they were not aware of any complaints filed about their policies or any public record requests for incident reports.

BC’s daily student paper, The Heights, considered a lawsuit last spring when they were denied access to Boston College Police Department (BCPD) incident reports.

Editor-in-Chief Nancy E. Reardon said that when BCPD officers and Eagle EMS, a student emergency medical services group, were assisting a person injured in a car accident, local paramedics were slow to respond and claimed someone had called to cancel the ambulance.

“The BCPD alleged Eagle EMS canceled it, and Eagle EMS alleged it was BCPD,” Reardon said. “There has been a lot of tension between [the two groups].”