CLARIFICATION APPENDED

A group of Harvard and MIT students lobbying the Mass. State Senate to pass Bill 1735, which would force campus police to release confidential incident reports, door-dropped a flyer last week criticizing a Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) advisory.

The flyer and the HUPD advisory addressed an attempted kidnapping that occurred on March 9. The HUPD advisory warned Harvard community members of a Hispanic suspect in his late 20s who was driving a Honda sedan when he allegedly attempted to force a woman into his car at about 2 a.m. by brandishing a fake gun but fled when a Kennedy School of Government guard arrived.

The door-dropped flyer featured a copy of the Cambridge Police Department (CPD) community alert on one side, and on the other, criticized the HUPD advisory for containing “multiple errors”. According to the flyer, the advisory did not include the first three digits of the car’s license number, cited an incorrect year for the Honda sedan, and failed to mention the car had tinted windows.

According to the flyer, undergraduates A.J. Kennedy ‘07 and Danny P. Lane ‘07, who are both members of the Safe Campus Initiative (SCI) drafted the flyer. Students formed SCI—a club with chapters at several Boston-area schools—recently to advocate for the bill, according to Dan E. McAnulty, a 2005 MIT graduate and SCI member.

But Kennedy and Lane said last night that although the flyer was attributed to SCI, it is really the work of James K. Herms, and SCI only helped to distribute the flyers. Herms, an MIT graduate and former extension school student, gave SCI a donation, and SCI in turn paid students to pass out the flyers, Kennedy said.

Herms currently has a trespass warning that prevents him from stepping on campus. Police cited him after he allegedly made inappropriate comments with sexual connotations to students at Dudley House Co-op and for “misrepresenting his relationship with the Harvard security guards and the Committee Against Sexual Violence at Harvard,” HUPD told The Crimson in 2004.

HUPD spokesman Steven G. Catalano wrote in an e-mail yesterday that the HUPD advisory is accurate.

“As we have stated in the past, we will address any concerns brought forward by legitimate members of the Harvard community,” Catalano wrote. “At this point in time, that has not occurred.”

Herms disputes the allegations—as well as the legitimacy of the trespassing order—and has been charged with violating his no-trespass warning on various occasions.

In response to the attempted kidnapping, CPD also sent out a community alert slightly different from the one released by HUPD, according to the flyer.

“In any police department, there’s always a chance that what I put out from CPD is somewhat different from HUPD,” said CPD spokesman Frank T. Pasquarello.

The flyer argues that passage of the Senate bill would give community members access to information the advisory allegedly left out.

“Public knowledge would help,” McAnulty, of SCI, said. “Having records available means that people can know what to look out for.”

And although Herms is not allowed on campus, he said he still wants to improve campus safety.

“I have been doing my best to improve the efficiency of HUPD,” Herms said. “And one way you find out how effective you are is through the amount of discomfort one provokes.”

—Staff writer Anna L. Tong can be reached at tong@fas.harvard.edu.

CLARIFICATION: While this article refers to Harvard’s no-trespass order against James K. Herms and subsequent criminal trespass charges against him, it does not mention that in the summer of 2005, the criminal charges were dismissed and the no-trespass order was modified to allow Mr. Herms on Harvard property for certain specified reasons (which do not include distribution of fliers on campus).  The article also neglected to note that it was Mr. Herms, not the HUPD, who voluntarily showed the Crimson a letter from Harvard detailing the University’s allegations of improper conduct by Mr. Herms, which led to the no-trespass order.