Posted on 03/01/2018 1:01:17 PM PST by Jacob Douglas
USF MO #2: Disclosing the Incident to the Public
With the undisclosed burglaries that took place at the University of South Florida's Registrar and College of Engineering Offices back in June of 2015, Florida’s Sunshine law took a major hit. USF was not at all transparent with its most important constituency, its students, but also orchestrated a cover-up to keep the general public from knowing, and to prevent the media from covering a newsworthy story. Surprisingly, it was the Provost’s office and not President Judy Genshaft’s office, that was first notified of the burglaries. After learning of the burglaries, Provost Ralph Wilcox sent his personal assistant to the Registrar’s office where one break-in occurred to retrieve all Emails and information pertaining to the burglary and suspect from the Registrar’s office. The Provost also instructed his assistant to tell the then Interim-acting Registrar, Carrie Garcia and the former Associate Registrar Tony Embry to inform the Registrar's office staff to not send to or copy the Provost on any email concerning the incident. Later when the Provost’s assistant was questioned about a whistleblower’s allegation that the Provost wanted the Emails destroyed, the provost's assistant denied the allegations, and told USF’s Audit and Compliance investigator Kate Head that while she was sent to gather other student records, she did not pick up any Emails or records pertaining to the suspect.
Upon concluding their investigation, the USF’s Audit and Compliance investigator Kate Head released the following written statement to Fox 13 News : “The Special Assistant indicated that she never requested and/or obtained physical copies of emails from the Interim Registrar or any other employees in the Registrar’s Office regarding the break-in and did not instruct these individuals to delete the subject emails. While the Special Assistant to the Provost was asked to go to the Registrar’s Office by the Provost to pick up some student records from the Interim Registrar, these records were not emails.”
This is false! In an Email sent by former Associate Registrar Tony Embry to Chris Daniels just two days following the burglary, Embry wrote to Daniel’s stating the following: "BTW the Provost Office picked up a copy of all the documents and E-Mails related to the Hussein issue." When questioned, Embry once again re-affirmed to Tina Jensen that the Provost’s assistant did in fact pick up records and Emails pertaining to the suspect. So what was USF trying so hard to hide or conceal about that night and the suspect? It is clear to me that a serious and troubling cover-up took place on the part of high-ranking USF officials, just days following the burglary. When state officials were notified of this cover-up, no difficult or hard questions were asked of USF, and they should have been. Instead, state officials, such as the Florida Inspector General's Office, State Attorney General's Office, and the Florida Board of Governor's Office, were all derelict in their duties in deferring the whistleblower's complaint to USF’s own Audit and Compliance Office, who issued a no-fault ruling for their employer. As a result of poor decisions made across the board, the hard questions were never asked of USF, about their failure to report the crime or whatever happened to those Emails and records that the provost's assistant confiscated with regards to the suspect. USF was held to absolutely no accountability whatsoever for clear-cut omissions and failures. It is still unclear if this was to prevent news of the break-in from leaking out or to keep the incident out of public record or both. The USF Police were told to not publish the information on their crime blotter, though they were officially required to do so under the Clery or Campus Security Act. USF Police told Embry that “this burglary would not find its way into any newspaper”, and it wouldn’t have, except for a whistleblower’s complaint that exposed the cover-up.
However great or small, there was a possibility that the computer tower contained student records. USF claims the tower only contained a single record. Despite USF's denial that "only one student's information was on the hard drive", this is simply not true. It is believed that other students’ information was contained on the stolen hard drive, and this was how the suspect was able to make what Tony Embry stated to the USF police and DOE as "near perfect forgeries." The suspect changed his grades to show better marks than what he earned, and he also changed his courses to those he never took as well. The only way that he could do so is because he used the other students' information contained on the hard drive. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recommends notification whenever bad or questionable activity risks personal identity or confidential information. USF defended their actions to Fox News and the Department of Education’s Clery Unit, who was also notified of USF’s failure to report the burglaries, by claiming the news was kept quiet because the matter involved Homeland Security. USF restated its single-record theory, and the USFPD simply noted the burglary, however inconspicuously, in its logs.
Concerning the burglary that occurred at the College of Engineering, Keith Ninemire, the investigator assigned by the Department of Education’s Clery Unit, noted the following: “I am reviewing the case and want to find out more about the Engineering burglary. I have a copy of the crime logs from USF and I cannot find a burglary at the College of Engineering for any dates around the 27th of June in 2015.” The Department of Education, like the FBI and Broward County Sheriff’s Department, dropped the ball on this one. The DOE dismissed the whistleblower’s complaint, simply because USF Police did not log this crime into their log book, and despite having evidence that the suspect was an engineering major who had stolen transcript papers and other items from the Registrar’s Office and very likely from the building where he also attended classes – the Engineering Department. The DOE also had an eyewitness who told them that USF Police Officer Brian Pearson was the person who had shared with him that the College of Engineering had also been burglarized. This should have come as no surprise to the DOE, because the USF Police also did not report the burglary at the Registrar’s Office until they were forced to do so because of a whistleblower’s complaint.
I think that the University of South Florida should have been fined and punished for violating Clery Law, just as other universities have been for their failures and omissions. What do you think? Let me know your opinion in the Poll posted below.
POLL: Should USF have been fined by the Department of Education for violating the Clery Act, or held to greater accountability by our State’s leaders?
Yes
No
Don’t know
POLL: Should USF change its MO (modus operandi) or ways of operating to notify students of crimes committed on campus or near the campus?
Yes
No
Don’t know
USF MO #3: Questioning the Suspect
USF declined comment to this story. Their viewpoint is no harm, no foul. USF had no way to know this since the USFPD missed the opportunity to question the suspect who was caught on video before he fled the country. If USF would have peeled back the layers of the onion just a little bit, they would have realized they dodged a bullet. The suspect's Facebook page shows he was an Engineering major at USF. Possibly, he had a motive for breaking into the College of Engineering building. The suspect's Twitter Page shows he could have posed a danger to USF students, faculty, staff, and the Tampa Bay community. He was suspected of committing two crimes. He was still at large after commission of the crimes. He fled the country. Two of the crimes were serious enough for the Florida State Attorney's Office to charge the suspect with a Felony Burglary.
SEE THE SUSPECT'S TWITTER PROFILE AS IT APPEARED THREE YEARS AGO, POSTED BELOW FOR YOUR REVIEW.
• Photographer & Reporter @OnehasMedia in the USA | USF Student trying to end this world through revolution, while enjoying the technology | وبسم الله Syria | Saudi
Tweet that the suspect favorited on Twitter: @my2007klan: How I feel when life hands me lemons... http://t.co/jh2MrnoDGF
@AboSohaib: @my2007klan Make sure u finish ur degree and leave the country before the smoke covers the US land :p SEE THE SUSPECT's TWITTER PROFILE AS IT APPEARS TODAY, POSTED BELOW.
• A human Being. Successful..Well, I think. Capable of great many things… Yet I get distracted easi Syria | Saudi | America
The only thing that has changed about the suspect is that he’s now using an alias last name – from Hussein three years ago to Alhaj. Folks, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit, if this guy isn’t once again attending USF-INTO under his new name, and with their blessing too. This bears repeating, public accountability demands that school officials be more concerned about student welfare than covering their own asses, as USF did back in 2015 and are still doing today.
Let me know your opinion in the poll posted below.
POLL: After reading the twitter page, would you have contacted the authorities?
0 Yes because the student is a danger to others
0 No because that’s racial / ethnic profiling
0 Maybe because the student might be radicalized
Stay tuned for Part Three.
Maybe someone who knows every detail of this story (the apparent intended audience for this article) could explain what’s going on?
So it appears that the University of South Florida covered up the crimes of a Muslim engineering student?
tl;dr Can somebody provide the executive summary?>
You too can learn Journalism in the university of Phoenix, only 150,000 dollars in student loans later.
It seems that way to me too! And they got away with it too, all thanks to our useless State of Florida agencies, including the DOE.
Coming soon!
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