During the summer I got a job driving buses for Shuttle-UM. As part of our orientation, we were trained in University Police’s new citizen-watchdog program, Community on Patrol.

The COP program aims to help continue the significant law enforcement gains made in Prince George’s County over the past couple of years by encouraging the civilian population to “become trained observers” — or, if you’re from Baltimore, snitches —”in order to promote Public Safety through their routine daily actions.”

The COP program logo uses the catchphrase “see something, say something.” At our Shuttle-UM training session on the issue, we were instructed to avoid racially profiling offenders, but to cite them based on suspicious behaviors, such as parking a Mack truck in a bush or throwing package bombs at passersby (I made up the latter, but the COP training session took for granted the immense amount of common sense that’s implicit in spotting crime).

If you’re new to the area, you’ve probably heard horror stories about the amount of violent crime that takes place in Prince George’s County. If you’ve done your homework, however, you know that the area’s been getting a lot safer. Over the past six years, homicide rates dropped 46 percent and robbery — strong-armed and armed — dropped 45 percent.

Despite these improvements, the dominating narrative among many of the hyper-privileged students residing in Prince George’s County remains the same: We live in a ghetto — a word often spoken, but hardly ever defined or used as its proper meaning. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as, “A quarter in a city, esp. a thickly populated slum area, inhabited by a minority group or groups, usu. as a result of economic or social pressures.”

In the United States, “infamous” ghettos include: parts of Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia, New York City and Chicago. I don’t think anyone would categorize Prince George’s County — where residents have a median household income of about $70,000 — with these power players. Just compare this county to our neighbor, Baltimore City, where the average household makes half as much and owner-occupied housing units are half as valuable, and where 22.9 percent of the population lived below the poverty line in 2009.

Leave it to this university’s law enforcement department to implement a program that could make a pernicious myth worse. Crime levels are dropping in major ways, yet they’ve chosen now to encourage university employees and community members to “be on the lookout” for criminal activity, which is occurring with less and less frequency.

What’s the message? That we need to be on the lookout at all times because this place is that dangerous?

This mindset can only exacerbate the overblown notion that Prince George’s County qualifies as a ghetto and that the local population is mostly comprised of a bunch of scary criminals. I would encourage all of the incoming freshmen — who are reading what is likely their second-ever issue of The Diamondback — and everyone else to resist this close-minded, baseless fear.

I would even go so far as to say, don’t be on the lookout. Your chances of foiling a terrorist plot are slim to none. Just take care of one another and remember: The boogieman does not exist.

Michael Casiano is a senior American studies and English major. He can be reached at casiano@umdbk.com.