OSWEGO, NY— City of Oswego Mayor Billy Barlow has proposed a $90,000 grant to increase police patrols within the Port City. The new patrols will be called “quality-of-life patrols” and will be conducted on foot by Oswego City Police Department every Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening. The proposal for more policing in the city comes after a recent increase in the number of night time disturbances reported to the Oswego City Police.

Some students from the SUNY Oswego fear the new patrols will be specifically targeting students. Julian Martinez, a junior finance major at SUNY Oswego said, “Why now? Why increase the patrols now? After all these years of having the college involved in the community what debauchery is occurring to make them increase the patrols?”

Martinez believed the patrols will be mainly focusing on student activity. He noted many Oswego State students are most active in the city on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. The same nights the quality of life patrols will be conducted.

Other students feel the patrols will help make the city a safer place for students. Senior, business-administration major Az Wilson said, “ It’s going to be better. It’s going to make the city a lot safer. I think it would help protect some of our students who go out on those nights as well.”

Mayor Barlow said the quality-of-life patrols are not meant to target students and he feels having police walking the streets at night will benefit the city, as well as university students. Barlow said he wanted “boots on the ground” to make sure city codes were being enforced and to ensure no large disturbances affected the city on its busiest nights. 

Mayor Barlow also hopes the quality-of-life patrols will create a stronger relationship between the city police and the residents of the city.

Barlow said, “We know the relationship between police and public can be strained at times and I believe the best way to improve that relationship is to get the police out of the station, out of the cop car, walking in the parks, walking in the neighborhoods, and collecting data, but also forming relationships with our community members.” 

Mayor Barlow said the Oswego City Police Department already has a good relationship with the community it serves, but more outreach can always be done.

The quality-of-life patrols have been funded for the rest of 2019 and all of 2020.

SUNY Oswego students who frequently print their essays 15 minutes before their 8 a.m. class, can rejoice. A faster system used to print documents called “Laker print” has been introduced on campus just in time for the spring semester.

Laker print is designed to be a more efficient way to print documents on campus by cutting back on waste caused by banner pages and forgotten documents. The system allows students to upload their documents by either email or direct file upload. Students can then print out their documents at any laker print station on campus within 48 hours.

“It’s awesome!” says Oswego student Leo Karr. “The website is convenient because you can prep everything by uploading it to the website. Then you can just go to the printer station.”

While some students have embraced the change to laker print, others are not quite used to it yet.

“I have to go to one computer to have it sent to laker print, then I have to go to another computer to open laker print and print it out,” says Oswego student Stephanie Phipps, “so it’s kind of annoying.”

While there is a difference of opinion about Laker print, CTS Chief of Technology Officer Sean Moriarity says the transition has been nothing but smooth.

“I give tremendous credit to our client’s services team.” says Moriarity. “They really made it a focus to make sure that is we introduced (Laker print) to students, it would go as smoothly as possible.”