Officers from Tulane University Police Department and Loyola University Police Department spoke to students, reporters and NBC news about how to solve campus-area security breaches during a town hall meeting Tuesday.

The departments held the meeting to demonstrate the steps they are taking to prevent necessary precautions to prevent unwanted attacks and thefts. Policemen have taken steps to protect on-campus and off-campus students. TUPD Superintendent Jon Barnwell said there were designated spots that needed more police patrolling than others.

“We’re making large patrols around South Carrolton Avenue where 90 percent of the upperclass Tulane students live,” Barnwell said. “[That area] has a lot of crime trends.”

The police force hired two additional off-campus officers to patrol every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This semester, TUPD added four New Orleans Police Department officers for weekends. These officers currently wear reflective jackets to increase visibility and have established safety quarters to help patrol traffic.

Chief of Loyola Safety Patrick Bailey said he was concerned about the rising number of crimes still occurring near the campuses.

“Every semester, there’s a new spike in crimes,” Bailey said. “The biggest crime facing our students is theft. In the past couple weeks, I’ve heard of at least four armed robberies that took place.”

TUPD instituted three lines of defense that the force will execute in an attempt to prevent these crimes. Commander of second district Paul Nowell said that the police are recruiting more officers as well as dividing these police forces into smaller groups.

“There are now 38 uniformed officers working three shifts who respond to 911 calls,” Nowell said. “There are task force officers and narcotic officers who target the suspected criminals. We have detectives and investigators in the scene who look into the car break-ins and burglaries.”

Nowell said the victims of these crimes need to be careful with the way they go about their lives. One officer reported that out of the last 16 car burglaries, he was called in to investigate, more than half of the cars had their doors unlocked. The officer also reported that in a different investigation involving stolen cars, one-third of the stated stolen cars had keys in the ignition.

Paul Nowell said civilians needed to start opening their eyes.

“We need to be smarter with the way we conduct ourselves,” Nowell said.

Senior Zach Ulrich said that numerous organizations, such as Students Organizing Against Racism, want to incorporate these police ideas into their It’s Not Enough Campaign, the movement to get more policemen on campus. Participants of SOAR expressed a desire to unite with policemen in universal efforts to keep the campus crime-free. Ulrich said it was crucial that these organizations start collaborating.

“We’re all trying to find out how best to attain social justice,” Ulrich said. “It should not just be limited to the Uptown campus.”