Is UBC experiencing an abundance of crime or a lull?

Lately I've been seeing headlines like RCMP’s Major Crimes Unit takes over university assaults case after third violent attack at UBC. At the moment it seems that one guy has attacked three women in three weeks. Given the headlines it's been making you'd think this would be a crisis.

Compare how many sex crimes you'd expect to see were the claim that 1-in-4 female undergrads are sexually assaulted during their time at university meet reality. UBC in Vancouver had 26,682 female students in 2012/2013. Assume an average of 5 years to complete a degree and 1 in 4 being assaulted during that time. Under these assumptions you'd expect to see 1334 women sexually assaulted each year for the FIRST time or roughly 3.7 per day. That doesn't even consider yet the possibility that some women get sexually assaulted multiple times. Even if you assume 90% of assaults go unreported, you'd expect to see 2-3 reported sexual assaults in a typical week. UBC, by contrast, seems to have only had 3 reports in 3 weeks.

If you were in charge of allocating police resources what should you do? If you believe that 1-in-4 women are sexually assaulted during their time at university, you should divert police resources away from UBC at the moment as it would seem to be experiencing a period of relative safety. If you don't buy that claim (and if you believe the US campus crime data that by law must be reported by universities you shouldn't) you might do what the police actually seem to be doing - increase police resources in an attempt to address this.

Bad data and bad analysis make for bad policy. Thankfully here the police seem to be addressing reality rather than the rhetoric of many a feminist.