Since Oct. 16, Village A has seen four burglaries and one attempted forced entry. The crimes have prompted the Department of Public Safety to hold a town hall meeting with Residence Life and increase patrols in the area.
In all but one of the Village A burglaries, the residents had left their doors unlocked. According to the Associate Director of DPS Joseph Smith, the four burglaries occurred in blocks D and E of Village A, and suspects typically stole laptops.
In order to address the string of burglaries and student concerns, DPS and ResLife held a town hall meeting in the Village A community room on Tuesday. Twelve Village A residents attended the meeting.
Smith and Cory Peterson, the Village A area coordinator, emphasized the difficulties associated with effectively monitoring Village A.
“It’s a challenge, because when [the complex] was built, buildings weren’t built with the security environment in mind,” Smith said. “We’re reviewing the environment, saturating the area [with more officers], taking close surveillance, but we’re not going to be intrusive about it.”
Several long-term security projects are currently in the works. As it installs wireless Internet access in dorms, the University is also installing a new surveillance system that should be operational in the next year, Smith said. The surveillance system will be wireless and will record high-resolution images.
Eight university offices and organizations, including DPS, Housing, and GUSA, have also started looking into security issues on campus, such as the number of blue light boxes. They will also have to present their findings to the University at some point in the future, Peterson said.
Since the recent string of burglaries, there have been extra patrols at Village A.
“There are two extra overtime details [at Village A]. All officers are told that when they have a free moment, [they should] check Village A,” Smith said.
Peterson said that DPS currently makes rounds in Village A twice a night on weekdays and three times a night on weekends. Each duty round can last anywhere from a half an hour to three hours. Peterson added that trees and shrubberies in the complex will be cut back to improve visibility.
In an email, Smith said that DPS is conferring with the Metropolitan Police Department on the burglaries.
“If people have the opportunity to burglarize people, people can push that boundary because they know that someone’s back here [living in this area]. It’s not the first year that [burglaries have] happened,” a student who was the victim of the attempted forced entry said. She wished to remain anonymous because she was concerned about her safety. “[This week] was the first time I personally saw a DPS officer back here. It took a bunch of burglaries for that to happen. Prospect is like an open door. I don’t understand why no one’s back here [in Village A].”
There have been 16 other on-campus burglaries during this school year. From Sept. 2009 to Aug. 2010, there were 32 incidences of burglary in on-campus student residences, including four in Village A residences.
Smith and Officer Shannon Kasparek emphasized the necessity of including students in the security process. Kasparek said that officers have been looking at windows and checking doors to make sure that they are locked. Students need to make sure that they are not leaving unlocked doors and windows unattended, she said.
Another meeting between DPS, ResLife, and Village A residents has been scheduled to continue the joint effort by students and officials to address security concerns.
“Maybe by the end of that evening, we’ll have a pretty decent plan to work on,” Smith said. “We are in this together as a team and we need to approach it as a team.”
