MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- Allegations that West Virginia University altered crime reports to make the campus appear safer are under federal investigation, Team 4's Paul Van Osdol reported Tuesday.

WVU Police Officers Robert Ryan and Ken Fike and former officer Dan Holsinger recently won a whistleblower lawsuit against the university.

Holsinger says he was forced to change WVU police reports -- mostly burglaries of dormitory rooms.

"They would ask us to label it larceny, which would be a misdemeanor, as opposed to a burglary, which is a felony," said Holsinger.

Under federal law, colleges only report felonies to the public. The WVU Web site lists numbers for burglaries, but not larcenies.

"I have been a law enforcement officer for roughly 20 years and I have never been asked to do anything like this before," Holsinger said. "It was very troubling, to say the least."

Ryan and Fike say they were also told to mislabel reports. The officers listed 29 reports in their lawsuit, but said hundreds more were mislabeled.

"It was just common practice," Ryan said. "That's how we were told these reports were to be labeled. It troubled me, but at the same time, we didn't want to make waves."

Eventually, the officers complained to top WVU officials. They had an ally in their supervisor, Richard Panico, who has since left the department.

"I personally know there's several reports I have been involved with that I was told to change," Panico said. "I didn't change it, and it was sent to investigations and it disappeared."

WVU Police Chief Bob Roberts admits some of his officers may have mislabeled some reports, but he says it was never done intentionally. He denies any suggestion of corruption.

"Could we be misclassifying them for Clery purposes? I've said this all along -- yes," Roberts said, referring to the Clery Act, a federal law requiring colleges to report crimes. The law is named for Lehigh University student Jeanne Clery, who was murdered in her dorm room.

Roberts says WVU follows the same crime reporting procedures as most other colleges.

"If we're wrong, this is not just WVU," he said. "It's something that needs to be clarified across the country."

Brett Sokolow, an attorney and campus crime expert, agrees that many colleges could be mislabeling crimes, in part because the Clery Act is difficult to follow. The result is that parents and students are misinformed about crime.

"When crimes are mislabeled, if they are minimized, it creates a false sense of security," he said. "When information is not published, when statistics are not disclosed, members of the college community have no idea whether to know whether the college is a safe place."

In the wake of the lawsuit and federal investigation, WVU says it has changed the way it reports crimes. The officers hope their suit forces all colleges to take a closer look at how crime is reported.

"What happened to Jeanne Clery was essentially a burglary that obviously went terribly bad," Holsinger said. "The things that happened to her could happen to my daughter or yours or your granddaughter or any kids."

The three officers were awarded $868,000 by a jury. The judge threw out $600,000 in punitive damages, and the officers are appealing that part of the verdict.

The FBI recently found that WVU is complying with its reporting requirements. The U.S. Department of Education is investigating whether the college complies with its rules, which are different from those of the FBI.