A Cerritos College student was sexually harassed by a man in the men’s restroom on the ground floor of the Social Science Building in the morning of Monday, Sept. 16.
According to Cerritos College Campus Police Captain Tom Gallivan, the incident was addressed to campus police the following day.
The notice wasn’t released until the evening time but Student Services dean Steven Johnson said the reason for getting the notice out so late in the day was because of the process and publishing the campus police has to go through before it is released.
Johnson said that the notices are published as soon as possible so that the campus can be aware of the safety alerts immediately.
Once the notice went through processing and publishing, Gallivan then published the notice to the campus through Emergency Text Alerts.
According to the notice, the suspect was described as a black man between 40 and 45 years old and about 6 feet tall, 180 pounds. It also states that he had dark eyes, a shaved head and discolored teeth.
Psychology professor Todd Gaffaney said he is aware of who the victim is and said he believes the victim pushed the suspect away from him upon exposing himself.
Gallivan talked about the process that campus police has taken to catch the individual.
“We notify all of our cadets and the officers so they have a description of the individual. This individual kind of stands out from what you saw from the so we put out the description to all of our staff and then we put out the alert to alert you.
“(We) post it on all the buildings and then we contact the local agencies that surround the school to see if they have any similar type of crimes. We’ll see if any of the agencies have had some kind of contact with a subject matching the description.”
He said that the campus has contacted both the Norwalk and Cerritos police stations.
Since he has only been working for the campus police station since March, Gallivan is unaware of any previous sexual assaults on campus but finds this case particularly odd.
“I haven’t heard of anything like this before. A very, very unusual case. That’s why we’re hoping (to) get the help of the students to see if they have seen this individual around town, not just on the campus.
Someone might have seen him at a local shopping center or someplace within the community. And that’s why we are asking for assistance, for the student body to be our eyes and ears.
We can’t be everywhere and they are probably around the location surrounding the school more than we are. So it would be nice if anybody sees anybody matching the description, it would be nice for them to give us a call.”
The campus police station is located on New Falcon Way in the back of the college. They can also be reached by phone at (562) 402-3674.
