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SACRAMENTO – Several University of California campuses have not been complying with federal crime reporting laws, but there is no evidence that the schools covered up campus crime, according to a report by a UC task force. 

The report recommends several changes that UC president Richard Atkinson wants to implement to make certain the campuses are complying with federal law. 

Colleges and universities must keep and classify all campus crime statistics and make that data available to students, staff and faculty, something the UC system hadn’t done effectively, the report says. 

The flawed system was documented in a series of articles in The Sacramento Bee last September. The report prompted the federal government to begin an investigation into UC crime figures. 

The reports showed schools had been ignoring or misinterpreting the Clery Act, an 11-year-old federal law intended to increase awareness of campus crime. 

The UC report released this week includes an independent audit by George Washington University Police Chief Dolores Stafford, a nationally recognized expert on campus crime reporting. 

Her review concludes the Irvine and Riverside campuses “were seriously out of compliance.” UC Davis, while making a concerted effort to follow the Clery Act, also was not in full compliance. 

Stafford reported that crimes from branch campus locations and non-campus buildings were not included in annual crime reports at the Davis and Irvine campuses. 

She also found that in several instances burglaries were wrongly categorized as thefts and that crime statistics from residence halls were reported separately from on-campus statistics even though they should be reported as an aggregate number. 

“It is obvious that there was no intent to ’hide crime’ since some of the errors included instances where crimes were overreported,” Stafford writes in the report. “However, it is imperative that the campus make an effort to accurately report the crime statistics.” 

A spokesman for the UC Office of the President said Friday that the system will aggressively implement the task force recommendations, including calls for uniform reporting of Clery statistics and better training for officials who gather the data. 

“These are not going to gather dust on a shelf somewhere,” said spokesman Charles McFadden. 

UC officials plan to share the task force report with other colleges and universities, he said. 

Jennifer Beeman, director of UC Davis’ campus violence prevention program, said she generally agrees with Stafford’s perceptions and recommendations. 

“There’s nothing in there that anyone objects to,” she said. 

Beeman said she hopes that UC officials will devote more personnel to complying with the Clery Act. 

“People have been working above and beyond to comply with the act,” she said. “We were making every effort to do this right.” 

The UC task force recommendations include: 

— Setting up an office to ensure all campuses are using the same criteria to report crime. 

— Establishing uniform crime definitions from the FBI Uniform Crime Report, California Penal Code and the Clery Act. 

— Creating a central UC website with links to all campuses tht will serve as a clearing house. 

“There’s no question they were in violation,” said S. Daniel Carter, vice president of Security on Campus, Inc. in Tennessee. “The only question is whether or not it was intentional.” 

Carter, a vocal critic of UC crime reporting over the past year, said he was “very pleased” with the task force report because it lays groundwork for uniform reporting practices at the nine campuses. 

“They’re well on the road to doing what is right,” he said. 

But he said much of the blame for noncompliance can be placed on the U.S. Department of Education, the agency responsible for enforcing the Clery Act. 

“There has been no fear among these schools because the DOE has not been enforcing a 10-year-old law,” he said.