Emergency Notification:
In the event of a potential emergency or dangerous situation, confirmed by university authorities and that poses an imminent threat to members of the UMD campus community, university authorities will notify the campus community without unnecessary delay, taking into account the safety of the community, the appropriate audience for the communication, and the professional judgment of the responsible authorities, to ensure that efforts to assist victims and contain, respond to, or mitigate the emergency are not compromised.
UMD will confirm an emergency via dispatched officers, video monitoring, and notifications from the National Weather Service or other emergency professionals on the scene. Information obtained from these responders will be used by UMD authorities in order to determine the content and scope of the notification and will initiate the notification process. The situation will dictate which notification methods are used. Notification methods include: through news media; online at the UMD home page at www.d.umn.edu; through SAFE-U (the University’s text message emergency notification system); and through e-mail; tone-alert radios; phone and fax trees; outdoor warning system; digital signage; social media; and posted emergency notices on the entrances and exits to buildings, and by on-scene public safety personnel.
In these cases, the Chief Law Enforcement Officer or designee has the authority to immediately take action to activate the emergency notification system.
UMD Crime Alert/Timely Warning Guidelines:
The University of Minnesota Duluth issues timely warnings to the campus community for crimes that occur on University property or in areas adjacent to campus. Timely Warnings are an important requirement of the federal Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (informally known as the "Clery Act"). The purpose of a Timely Warning is to inform the University community of a threat or ongoing risk and enable community members to take action to protect themselves and be safe.
Crimes that may trigger a Timely Warning include criminal homicide, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, arson, or any other crimes that the University feels pose an ongoing threat to the University community.
Timely Warnings are distributed via email to all University of Minnesota Duluth students, faculty, and staff.
The University will use suspect descriptions only when there is sufficient detail that would reasonably help identify specific individual suspects or groups of suspects (e.g., some combination of gender, race, clothing, height, body type, build, accent, tattoos, hair color, facial hair). UMD’s police chief and UMD leadership will decide whether to include descriptions in Timely Warnings on a case-by-case basis. The time, place, and nature of the crime that occurred will continue to be included in each Timely Warning.
Because a vast majority of our student population lives on and near the UMD campus, the University of Minnesota Duluth and its police department have worked closely with the Duluth Police Department to highlight their public information strategies and social media channels when crimes occur in the adjacent Duluth neighborhoods.
When a partner law enforcement agency asks the University for help in disseminating public safety information, or when the UMDPD determines that providing information will help advance the University's goal of creating a shared culture of safety on campus, the University of Minnesota Duluth may provide that information to the greater public.