Johns Hopkins campus edgy after slaying of student

BALTIMORE – It’s the nation’s most prestigious medical research institute, endowed with about $1.9 billion in government and private funding. But Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where a student from Maine was murdered in 1993, also has become a place where it’s easy to find victims of crime.

Even during the school’s recent winter break, when a trickle of students stop by a library coffee shop, it doesn’t take long to hear about areas around the university’s Baltimore campus that change radically after dark. Students describe a renowned institution besieged by crime that spills over from nearby areas.

“I’ve had friends mugged at gunpoint,” said Michelle Slater, a 30-year-old graduate student whose apartment was broken into during her first year at the university. “It’s really shocking.”

The latest killings recall the slaying of Laurence Jones Jr., 24, of Bangor, Maine, a Johns Hopkins graduate student who was shot in the eye during a robbery while returning to his rowhouse apartment on Nov. 20, 1993.

Jones’ killer was convicted and sentenced in 1998 to life plus 20 years.

An Eagle Scout and a member of his high school football and swim teams, Jones studied at the University of Maine before entering a graduate program in psychology at Johns Hopkins. He planned to work with disabled people after completing his studies.

The problems in Baltimore echo the difficulties faced by other urban schools.

The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, which was shaken by two murders just off campus in the mid-1990s, embarked on a large, long-term initiative that included more use of cameras and partnerships with neighborhood leaders and residents to revive West Philadelphia.

The University of Southern California also uses community outreach programs to help fight crime around its south-central Los Angeles campus. And Spelman College in downtown Atlanta relies on police-monitored gates around campus.

The killing of a Johns Hopkins senior Jan. 23 has underscored the sense of vulnerability students feel in a city where there has been virtually a murder a day since the beginning of the new year.

Linda Trinh, 21, became the second Johns Hopkins student murdered in nearby off-campus housing in less than a year. No arrests have been made, and police said the killing by asphyxiation of the popular student from Silver Spring, Md., appeared to be one of “opportunity.”

Students, many just returning from winter break, held a rally Monday night in front of the home of university President William Brody to encourage school officials to beef up security.

About 100 students took part in the rally, which Johns Hopkins spokesman Dennis O’Shea described as nonconfrontational. Brody came out and spoke with the students about new security measures, and the university provided hot chocolate.

Earlier Monday, Johns Hopkins announced stepped-up measures, including hiring off-duty Baltimore police officers to patrol the Charles village neighborhood at night and overnight. The officers will be in the municipal police uniforms, armed, and will patrol on foot and in vehicles.

The university also will contract with a security agency to provide foot patrols near campus, and the agency will also staff the security desks at two off-

campus apartment complexes.

The university is speeding up plans to install surveillance cameras, a suggestion by iXP Corp., the security consultant hired by the school. Plans call for installing cameras on campus as well as at off-campus areas with heavy student traffic.

The school is exploring other measures to bolster security and already has improved lighting and an emergency telephone system on campus, O’Shea said.

University officials have been working to address security concerns for the growing campus since last April, when a security consultant made his first visit to Johns Hopkins.

A week later, 20-year-old Christopher Elser was dead, stabbed to death by an intruder inside an apartment house that had been rented to members of his fraternity. Elser’s killer also hasn’t been found.

“I don’t feel safe anywhere around here,” said Todd Smith, an undergraduate whose car was stolen near the campus.

Other students say they know the university is trying to make the campus more secure.

“I feel like the school is extremely vigilant,” Slater said. “We do try to be careful, but I think there’s only so much you can do.”