University of Iowa police unveil ‘Hawk Watch’ for student protection

IOWA CITY — The University of Iowa Department of Public Safety has rolled out a new way for students and faculty to not only protect themselves, but communicate with university police.

Students, faculty and staff can now download Rave Guardian from their phone's mobile store for free. By entering their UI email address, the user gets access to the university's version of the app — Hawk Watch.

Floyd Johnson, Emergency Management Coordinator for the UI Department of Public Safety, said Hawk Watch has three basic functions. The first is the 'guardian' feature, which allows users to set a destination, estimated travel time and safety timer. If the user doesn't check in or turn off the safety timer, an alert is sent to the preselected guardian. Guardians can be friends or family members. The UI police dispatch center is the default setting, Johnson said.

'You can choose anyone you like,' he said.

When someone is selected to be a guardian, they will receive a text prompting them to download the Rave Guardian app, though only those with UI email addresses will have access to UI-specific features, Johnson said.

The guardian feature works like this: if a student is going somewhere — say, back to their residence hall after studying at the library — they can set their destination, estimated travel time and guardians. When they activate the safety timer, a countdown begins. As the timer approaches zero, the app will remind the user to disengage it if they reach their destination or add more time. If the timer reaches zero and the person has not checked in, a notification will be sent to the preselected guardian. If the user has enabled GPS tracking, their location will be sent as well.

Johnson said if an alert is sent to UI police, they will then have access to the user's profile information, which includes name, date of birth, phone number and other information they wish to include, such as allergies.

'Those are all things that are really helpful to dispatchers when they receive these emergency calls,' he said.

When UI dispatch receives an alert, they'll try to reach the student and, if necessary, send an officer — as they would with a normal call for service, Johnson said.

Additional UI-specific features allow users to call UI police directly from the app and to text anonymous tips, including photos, to police, Johnson said.

Johnson added that public safety officials have found today's generation tends to be more comfortable communicating via text and mobile devices. The Hawk Watch app tries to accommodate those preferences.

'What the department really hopes to accomplish here is for us to provide our community a way to communicate with us in a way they're most familiar with,' he said. 'The ultimate goal here is to provide another layer of security, another layer of protection.'