View February 2010 Crime Map in a larger map

February wasn’t a very criminal month at Georgetown. There were 25 crimes recorded in the Department of Public Safety Daily Crime Log, but nearly half of those were drug violations. There were two very violent crimes, however, one simple assault, and one sexual assault. Here’s the breakdown:

• There weren’t as many thefts in February as Georgetown usually sees recorded in a month. Only five thefts took place. A bicycle tire, a coat containing a scarf, an iPod, and cash, a wallet, the contents of a backpack, including a laptop, and a cellphone SIM card were the items stolen.

• Unusually, there were quite a number of drug violations at Georgetown last month. A grand total of 12 drug violations were recorded in February, far and away the most of any month in the DPS logs online. Earlier this month, readers pointed out to us that the spike coincided with the Voice cover story about Georgetown’s relatively lenient punishments for drug use.

• A sexual assault occurred this month at the Georgetown University Hospital in which an assailant touched a victim inappropriately and was arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department. MPD has not responded to several requests for more details about the assault, and DPS has referred Vox to the Hospital’s security.

• There was one simple assault at Georgetown at 36th and N Streets, in which two male students sent another student to the emergency room. The suspected assailants were identified and the case has been turned over to MPD.

• Two incidents of harassment occurred in which a complainant received threatening notes in Copley Hall and another received threatening notes in Darnall Hall.

• There was one case of unlawful entry recorded this month, in which an individual who had been barred from campus before was found in McCarthy Hall and was arrested and charged with unlawful entry.

• There was one case of public indecency, in which an individual was caught publicly urinating.

View January 2010 Crime Map in a larger map

January was a particularly violent month at Georgetown. Not because the number of crime incidents surged—there were 29 crimes reported for January in the Department of Public Safety’s Daily Crime log, which is about even with September and November, and nowhere near October, when 52 crimes were reported—but because the number of more serious incidents increased from months where there were a comparable number of crimes.

• Two assaults occurred on campus this month. The first was the incident Vox reported on in which a female student assaulted another with her keys after he broke up with her. The second occurred in Reynolds on a Thursday night, and ended with the complainant being treated in the emergency room for head injuries.

• A hit-and-run occurred at the Prospect Street gate which did not end in a trip to the emergency room.

• One robbery occurred in which the complainant was pushed into a wall and cash was stolen from her.

• Three cases of harassment were reported this month. In one, a student in Copley Hall received notes with offensive language; in another, someone received profane and harassing text messages; in the third case, someone in the New South Facilities building received annoying radio transmissions. All three cases are under investigation.

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View December Campus Crime Watch in a larger map

With students clearing out from campus before the month was over, December saw little crime. Only 14 crimes were reported all month, versus 52 in October and 28 in November, and there were no crimes reported after December 17. Here’s a breakdown of what was in the Department of Public Safety’s Daily Crime Log:

• There were four thefts at Georgetown in December. A wallet was stolen from a locker in Leo’s, a laptop was taken from Lauinger Library, a scarf was stolen from an office in Gervase, and a wallet was taken from a purse in the Hospital. In none of these cases were there any witnesses or suspects.

• Despite being a calm month, December did see one more serious crime, a case of simple assault at Lauinger Library. On December 8, at 2:50 p.m., a victim was hit in the chest several times by an unknown man, who fled the scene before he could be identified. Public Safety Department Associate Director Joseph Smith has not responded to requests for details about a description of the suspect, but we will let you know once he does.

• Two instances of destruction of property took place last month. On December 10, graffiti was discovered in Henle. (Again, we will let you know if Smith comments on the nature of the graffiti). In the other case, a car window was smashed in in the Southwest Quad parking garage.

• The fire in the New South dormitory made the log. DPS described its cause as “electrical outlet overload.”

• Two drug violations occurred in December. In both cases, DPS found marijuana in Harbin Hall. The log doesn’t indicate whether any students were present when the drugs were found, but if they are anything like their famous Harbin predecessor, they didn’t inhale.

• Two instances of “lewd, indecent, or obscene acts”—that is, men publicly urinating—showed up in the December log, one in Village A and one in Alumni Square.

• There was one case of fraud, in which someone seems to have used a book store gift card that wasn’t theirs, and one case of unlawful entry, in which a woman loitering in Dahlgren Chapel was barred from campus.

Now that we’re keeping an updated campus crime map, we figured at the end of every month we should give you a roundup of what (and how many) crimes have been committed on campus over the past month. Here’s what happened this July:

View Georgetown Voice Crime Map: July 2009 in a larger map

The Department of Public Safety finally updated their July Daily Crime Log yesterday, so we have all the data about campus crime this July. Last week Georgetown Metropolitan noted that the wider Georgetown neighborhood saw a bit of a crime spike this July, and it seems like that trend held for the University as well.

There were 29 incidents recorded in the DPS log during July, 53% more than June’s 19 incidents and 61% more than May’s 18 incidents. Here’s how the crime broke down this past month:

• If you’re looking for a cause of the campus crime spike, the answer is probably the huge increase in thefts. During July there were 24 thefts. That represents a 118% increase over June’s 11 thefts and a 200% increase over May’s 8 thefts. Earlier this month we noticed that there were a couple burglary sprees in the Southwest Quad—8 of the 24 thefts occurred in the Quad.
• One reported incident of disorderly conduct.
• One reported forcible entry into Maguire Hall (nothing was stolen).
• One reported assault.
• One reported sexual assault, the alleged rape which we reported on.
• One reported case of fraud perpetrated against the bookstore.

While most of the reported thefts involved cash, computers, bicycles or electronics like cameras and iPods, there was one curious case from July 22nd of a box of cherry hardwood flooring reportedly being stolen from the Harbin Garage. And unlike most of the other thefts, this case was actually classified as closed. How’d DPS solve it? According to the log, “Case closed after audit showed no missing materials.”

Now that we’re keeping an updated campus crime map, we figured at the end of every month we should give you a roundup of what (and how many) dastardly deeds were committed on campus over the past month. Here’s what happened this June:

View Georgetown Voice Crime Map: June 2009 in a larger map

Like May, June was a quiet month for Georgetown, with a total of 19 on-campus incidents reported in the DPS log. They breakdown as follows:

• 11 thefts
• 6 cases of unlawful entry or trespassing
• 1 case of destruction of property
• 1 case of threats

Probably the most intriguing incident of the month is the case of threats, for which the DPS log entry reads as follows:

June 12, 2009. 8:03 p.m.
Leavey Center—GUASFCU
Suspect threatened complainant over phone. Suspect identified. MPD notified.

We asked GUASFCU CEO Justin Lo Iacono about the incident, but he said that “the credit union does not discuss member details with the press, as all member details are confidential.”

The 11 cases of theft were mostly standard stuff (bicycles, wallets, electronics, laptops, etc), but there were a couple odd ones. On June 11, DPS reports the theft of “an electronic game and cord” from McCarthy Hall. On the 20th, someone stole hubcaps from a vehicle in the Southwest Quad Garage.

View Georgetown Voice Crime Map: April 2009 in a larger map

The April crime map

For our summer project, Vox has decided to start maintaining a campus crime map.  We’ll be using the information from DPS’s digital crime log to create a visualization of campus incidents for each month.  We’ll check the logs daily for updates and, if we do additional reporting on the crime, we’ll include links to our coverage as well.

You can get to the crime map by clicking on its tab in between “Home” and “Links” at the top of the page. On that page you can find small, embedded versions of the maps, as well as links to the larger, more viewer-friendly versions.

Right now, we have complete crime maps from April and May posted.  With the campus virtually uninhabited for a good portion of the month, it’s not suprising that May was a slow month for crime.  The DPS log shows just eight thefts, five incidents of suspicious or mischievous conduct or unlawful entry, two small fires, two incidents of destruction of property and one report of possible drug use for May.

April (shown above), on the other hand, was a much busier month for campus criminals, with DPS reporting 14 incidents of suspicious or mischievous conduct or unlawful entry, 14 cases of destruction of property, 13 thefts, 8 possible or confirmed reports of drug violations (only one of which was from 4/20), 3 cases of harassment, 2 assaults, 2 suspects apprehended and one case of check fraud.

April ended with something of a crime spike, with 23 DPS log entries for the last week of the month—5 more than were reported for the entire month of May.  This uptick may have had something to do with Georgetown Day weekend (April 24—26), which saw crimes like an attempted theft of a cake from Leo’s and someone throwing eggs at Harbin.

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Early this morning, five men assaulted and attempted to rob a Georgetown student, according to a Public Safety Alert sent out by DPS.

On Friday March 27, 2009 at approximately 12:40 a.m., a student reported to DPS that while he was walking in the area of 36th & P Streets NW, he was approached by five unknown males who asked him for money. He refused to comply and two of the suspects began striking him about the head. He began yelling and the suspects fled in an unknown direction. MPD arrived on the scene; however, the student declined to file a report.

According to the PSA, one of the suspects was described as a black male wearing a black hoodie and another was described as a Hispanic male in a black hoodie. No info was given about the other three suspects.

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One criminal has perpetrated six similar, creepy crimes in the past year

Last night’s PSA was a definite sound-alike to the slew of “Cuddler” crimes. And while the culprit in this latest sexual offense, which took place on the 1200 block of 35th Street, may not be the same behind similar crimes, it does call to mind a question: How many times has the criminal who Georgetown students call the “Georgetown Cuddler” struck near our campus?

Six, since January 2008. (We’ve been tracking him for a while, but even we’re surprised.) Yes, the Metropolitan Police Department verified in September that they suspect five different incidences which took place near Georgetown University in the last year to have had the same culprit. And that was before a similar crime with a similarly-described suspect occurred on September 25th, in which an officer said the MPD suspected the same suspect, making six.

If the MPD suspects him last Friday’s incident, too, that would make seven. In chronological order, they occurred on:

• January 13, 2008. “The first incident occurred on January 13, 2008 in the 3700 block of R Street, NW,” MPD 2D officer Helen Andrews wrote in an email to a community listserv.

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This evening, the Department of Public Safety sent out a PSA reporting that a burglary took place last Friday on the 1200 block of 35th Street. Boy, do I hate speculation, but I just can’t resist. It sounds like the sexual deviant students have nicknamed the “Georgetown Cuddler is on the loose again:

On Friday, January 30, 2009 at approximately 3:00 a.m., a student living in the 1200 Block of 35th Street was awakened to find an unknown male in her bed. The suspect left the bed and headed for the bedroom door as the complainant asked, “Who is that?” The suspect did not respond and left the residence.

The victim didn’t sustain any injuries and described the suspect “as a white male, medium build, with dark brown hair, wearing a black fleece jacket and jeans,” according to the PSA. DPS reported the crime to the Metropolitan Police Department.

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Caution: Blurbs are huge, follow the link to the larger map to view them

Having already complained about everybody else’s crime map, and pending the loss of MPD email alerts, Vox went ahead and made its own crime map for the Georgetown University area.

Compiled mainly from Department of Public Safety PSAs and, in cases where DPS did not report on the incident, such as the October attack on a Georgetown med student, from Voice and Vox Populi archives, the map above shows most of the crimes that have taken place near campus this school year to date.

I say ‘most’ because I haven’t included some of the more mundane crimes reported in the DPS blotter, such as Friday the 23rd’s “Mischievous conduct in Henle,” (an incident in which several persons threw rocks and empty beer cans from a Henle rooftop). I’ll continue to keep up with the blotter in the event that something more threatening to your safety pops up, but for now, if it’s fine by you, I’ll stick with DPS, CapStat, and the archives.

We’ll update the map regularly and alert you on our Twitter feed whenever we do so. Each crime blurb includes a description of the crime that occurred along with a link to Vox or the Voice’s coverage, which reads “expanded coverage…” or “even more coverage…” if the article expands on the narrative provided by DPS or provides follow-up information on the crime.

The map is of ironic lesser quality than its citywide counterparts, but given our little old budget, it’s not a bad start. And of course, we’re eager for feedback.