Fall Quarter police reports have revealed that 95 percent of campus crimes are theft-related.
“UCSD crime rates have been pretty consistent throughout my 25 years here,” UCSD Police Detective Doug O’Dell said.
He added that there is a pattern to crime on campus.
“The crime rate is spiky,” O’Dell said. “We’ll make an arrest and the crime rate will drop off and then it will start off again, with a different criminal, or the original offender. Crooks stick to what they know.”
O’Dell said that while going over 2010’s unofficial record, he counted nearly 400 thefts.
Of these, 35 percent of the thefts are of bicycles. The police have created measures to prevent and catch bicycle thieves. These measures include decoy bikes to lure thieves and extra surveillance in areas with more bikes.
“No one area on campus is more popular for thieves,” O’Dell said.
O’Dell said he is only aware of three murders in the history of UCSD.
One of those occurred last October, when police found the dead body of Carlsbad resident Lorena Gonzalez in a burning van in Lot 701. Another murder occurred in the 2005-06 academic year, in which a woman living in the graduate student housing poisoned her husband. The first one O’Dell knew of happened in the ’70s, when a man in student housing murdered his wife and left her in the trunk of his car while he fled the country.
Last quarter, there were 33 reports of theft, injury, vandalism and hit-and-runs in the areas surrounding Price Center alone. Violent crime, however, was uncommon.
According to O’Dell, the majority of crime during Fall Quarter was spread out fairly evenly across the campus. The detective emphasized that students’ belongings are often stolen due to carelessness.
“People in the library get up and walk away from a table and leave their stuff there,” he said. “They [leave] their laptop on [a] table and [leave] the library, and then come back several hours later. They are not securing their property.”
According to O’Dell, about seven to 10 years ago, UCSD had a large auto-theft problem. During that period, O’Dell said about 11 to 12 cars were stolen a month.
“UCSD is a good place for thieves to do their business,” O’Dell said.
Now, however, only two to three cars are stolen per month, and most often occur in the parking lots nearest the freeway. O’Dell said this is because car thieves are generally not from this campus and they find navigation confusing. O’Dell noted that inner lots are safer, but not guaranteed to be crime-free.
In 2010, there were 17 incidences of theft at Geisel Library. The items stolen were usually MP3 players, laptops and backpacks. The UCSD police are currently doing surveillance work to catch suspects. O’Dell said they have recently been successful in identifying and arresting suspects who frequent our campus.
It is difficult for the police to gauge past success in stopping crime because campus police have much smaller crime numbers to analyze than the San Diego police. Statistics are still mostly consistent.
“It’s not like we’re selling a product, crime doesn’t work that way,” O’Dell said.
Over these past two quarters, there have been several wallet thefts in the locker rooms at the Main Gym, RIMAC Arena and Canyonview Pool. The thefts tend to occur in the men’s locker rooms and not the women’s, leading the police to believe that the suspect is male.
The UCSD police have had some success in arresting thieves, but their success does not necessarily signal a drop in crime rates.
“As soon as one thief is arrested, another thief will come in,” O’Dell said.
In 2009, there were two categories of crime recorded. Property crime accounted for 94.93 percent of crime on campus, while violent crime accounted for 5.07 percent.
Property crime was made up of 84.17 percent larceny/theft, 8.61 percent burglary, 6.71 percent motor vehicle theft and 0.52 percent arson. Violent crime was made up 90.32 percent of assault, 6.45 percent robbery, and 3.23 percent forcible rape.
All figures were taken from University of California Police Department Annual Report and Crime Statistics.
