ASU police are working on a project to share safety tips and spread public-safety awareness to students, and officers want to take it to a whole new level — the student level.

Officer Brian Kiefling is working with several others to launch a Facebook page for the ASU Police Department, a project he wants students to be able to relate to.

“We want to get information out to students on a medium they already use regularly,” Kiefling said. “We want to put things on their level.”

ASU police has begun using the TV screens in the Memorial Union and Student Services building on the Tempe campus to share safety tips and relevant information, but Kiefling said he doubts students stop to watch the slides cycle through.

“We want to make something more interactive and fun that students will actually use,” he said.

The Facebook profile will hopefully give ASU police an identity, Kiefling said. His goal is to have the profile up and running by the beginning of the fall semester.

Though students may be suspicious, Kiefling said the profile won’t be used to monitor parties posted as Facebook events or bust students drinking in profile pictures.

“If you write ‘just got stoned,’ that doesn’t tell me where or how or when,” Kiefling said, referring to status updates. “I don’t think I could even do anything with that information.”

Kiefling said that kind of information could lead to investigations if it was especially specific, but the department doesn’t intend to use the site to investigate illegal activity.

College students often want nothing to do with police officers, a reason Kiefling believes ASU’s officers haven’t had success spreading safety tips to students verbally. Fliers have been equally ineffective, he said.

“[ASU] is absolutely papered with them,” Kiefling said. “It’s hard to catch any student’s eye and get them to read yours.”

ASU police spokesman Cmdr. Jim Hardina said while the project is still in its early stages, it should eventually increase communication between students and ASU police, a relationship he thinks will benefit students.

“We want to make sure we’re best serving a community of college students,” he said.

The planning team will eventually seek student input on details, Hardina said. Kiefling has worked with representatives from the Tempe campus Undergraduate Student Government and Greek Life on other safety matters.

The project may be extended to include other forms of media, like a weekly podcast in the style of a radio show.

Creating a recurring, interesting student that is like a “goofy ASU character” will encourage students to listen from week to week, Kiefling said.

“We want to make this fun and interesting,” he said.

Thomas Kane, president of the College Safety Zone and author of “Protect Yourself at College,” said he doesn’t know of any other colleges or universities in the U.S. using social-networking sites to provide safety tips or reach out to students.

“It needs to be advertised as ‘we’re not preachy,’ we just want you to know these important things and then students will embrace it,” Kane said.

Acknowledging that some students will drink, do drugs and have sex, Kane said many college students still don’t know how to remain safe in these situations.

“You have a better chance of being struck by lightning than being murdered on your college campus, but you are way more likely to be killed in a situation involving alcohol,” Kane said.

He believes it will be difficult to get students to visit a police Web site, but said the safety knowledge that could come from it is invaluable.

“[College police departments] need to convey messages to students about how to recognize dangerous situations before they get in them, and they need to do it on their level,” Kane said.

Kiefling said the ASU police department recognizes the effective ways students use Facebook to communicate and are looking to play a role.

“Students use [Facebook] all the time anyway, and we want to use a medium where they can come to us,” he said.

Reach the reporter at tessa.muggeridge@asu.edu.