Last month, a student on the Contra Costa College campus was flashed by an unidentified male suspect outside the John & Jean Knox Performing Arts Center.
An email and text from CCC was sent to students on Monday, March 10 at 3:16 p.m. after the incident stating, “Dear campus community, On Monday, March 10, 2025 at approximately 12:04 PM an unknown male subject sitting in a black sedan approached and exposed himself to a female student near Castro Road and The Knox Center. After the incident, the Contra Costa Community College District police department thoroughly searched the campus. The suspect was last seen leaving campus southbound via Castro Road, near El Portal Drive.”
Lieutenant Charles Hankins from the CCC campus police services explained that the incident didn’t technically happen on campus, since Castro Road belongs to the city. Even though the road doesn’t belong to the campus, CCC police services are still conducting an investigation.
“We investigated the case, and it’s still an open investigation, so we are still looking for leads into that. We notified San Pablo PD for tips and help in solving that case,” said Hankins. “As you know, there are cameras everywhere there, so they’re notified because it happened in their city, so just in case this did occur again – say, again down the street in the College Center, which is across the street – or occurred somewhere else in town, they’re aware that this happened here, too, so they can alert us.”
Police were originally alerted to the crime by the victim after they filed a report, Hankins said. The investigation is still ongoing, and the police have yet to identify or gather more information on the unknown male suspect.
“With a crime like this happening, it really relies on eyewitness testimony,” Hankins said. “There’s not really cameras over there for us to see what happened on the public street.”
Though so far no similar incidents have occurred at CCC, Hankins encourages students and staff to report any crimes or information they may have if they happen in the future. If students and faculty are unable to call the CCC police service phone number in the event of an incident, they can also call 911 for help on campus.
“One thing that I think would be helpful to the student population – also the guests and staff here on the campus – in crimes like this or any other crimes is to gather as much information as possible and report it right away,” said Hankins. “They can call 911. Our police officers are sworn police officers so they dispatch the same as San Pablo police.”
Some students told The Advocate that they did not receive the text notifying them of the exposure incident.
When asked about why some students did not receive a notification about the incident, Hankins explained it was likely due to settings on InSite.
“My assumption why some people didn’t get the text and some others did is because you had to opt in the feature to be able to get alerts when you sign up for InSite portal,” explained Hankins. “If you don’t, you won’t get those texts.”
Larry Womack, CCC Marketing Director and a spokesperson for the college, said that the message was sent out through ReGroup, an emergency communications platform licensed by the district.
“We use this platform only for safety-related notifications because, unlike our regular messages, students can’t unsubscribe. And, if it’s an immediate, life-threatening emergency, we can use it to sound the alarm in more immediate and intrusive ways, like alarms in classrooms, text messages, etc.,” said Womack.
Womack said that the message was delivered to 10,837 recipients, opened by 3,771 of those recipients and failed to deliver to an additional 27.
“This is an excellent opportunity to remind students to make sure they have updated and accurate phone numbers in their A&R files,” Womack said. “In an urgent, life-threatening emergency, a text to that number might be the first notification they receive.”
While this is still an open investigation and there’s additional information that has yet to be gathered, students and faculty who have experienced or witnessed a crime can contact CCC campus police services or 911.
