The real winner in the Defund the Police movement has been private security. And California is Ground Zero for private security firms, which often employ off-the-clock cops, and assorted mall cops, some of them heavily armed can be seen all over major California cities. Now private security paid for by parents is showing up on college campuses.

Parents of students at the University of California Berkeley have reportedly hired private security for their children, prompting consternation from school officials.

SafeBears, which ended on Saturday, paid six guards a total of about $42,000 to patrol at night near student housing and south of campus in response to increases in some types of crimes, including property crimes, the Times reported.

This is just what happens when wealthy parents send their kids to college in areas and cities where there’s no longer any meaningful law enforcement even as colleges pander to the pro-crime movement. And crime rates rise.

The SafeBears parent group formed after an October 2022 shooting that unfolded outside the university and left one man dead and three others wounded. No students were involved in the shooting and the university hired a private security company to patrol around the campus for a brief period.

From 2021 to 2022, robberies on campus jumped from 14 to 25 per year and aggravated assaults increased from 54 to 63, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Education. Sexual assaults decreased from 34 reported rapes and incidents of fondling, down to 17 for both categories the following year.

Reports of vehicle thefts surged from 81 in 2021 to 307 the following year, with the majority of thefts being e-scooters and e-bikes.

Reported crimes off campus also increased over the last year, according to the Berkeley Police Department. There were 7,960 total violent and property crimes in 2023, versus 7,201 in the previous year, with a jump in sexual assaults, robberies and burglaries, according to the latest data.

How many parents are involved in this? A whole lot.

There are roughly 1,300 members under the SafeBears banner, comprised of concerned parents who meet online, Jethani said. By comparison, there are roughly 30,700 undergraduates and 12,600 graduate students who make up the UC Berkeley population, according to the latest data from the university.

The LA Times is trying to minimize this, but when 1,300 parents are concerned enough about school safety to join a group and then fund private patrols, that’s a crisis.

But in a statement to the Times, school officials indicated they’d prefer more police officers, not security ambassadors.

“Parents who want to donate funds toward additional campus security can do so via a university fund that has been established,” the statement said. “We do not believe that private security should take precedence over hiring sworn officers.”

Clearly parents have no confidence in campus security. Here are a few local incidents that SafeBears lists.

Armed robbery spree: Two male students walking home from the gym around 11:00 pm were robbed at gunpoint; the four-person crew committed five robberies on and near campus that evening. (9/26/23)

AR-15 brandished: A female pedestrian was threatened with a semi-automatic rifle while being robbed at dawn one block from Unit 2, a dormitory for first-year students. (9/21/23)

Armed carjacking of student: A 19-year-old Cal student had just parked on a street adjoining Unit 2 when another car boxed her in; two men jumped out and stole her car at gunpoint. (10/9/23)

Not to mention…

Here are just a few recent examples of behavior by non-affiliates in just one building, the MLK Student Union:

Man on probation slaps one person and steals the laptop of another

Man in the women’s restroom, trying to look into the stalls

Man on probation “waiving a knife around”

American cities and universities are becoming crime-ridden dystopias. Either we restore the police and prisons that stopped the crime wave in the 90s or those who can hire their own private security.