Students report: Don’t go on Prospect St. at night

Earlier this week, University officials in conjunction with the planners at Sasaki Strategies rolled out its master planning survey for Georgetown University. In it, students, faculty, and staff are asked about their walking paths, where they eat, and where they socialize, among other things. Architects and planners at Sasaki plan to use the information to develop campus planning for the next 20 years.

The results of the survey are available online as entrants submit their responses. One of the questions asks where people feel unsafe on campus. Shown above are the results for the 668 undergraduate and graduate students who have taken the survey so far.

As expected, students feel the least safe on Prospect St, a conclusion that crime data more or less supports. Other clusters of unease include the front gates and, somewhat surprisingly, outside of Leo’s.

Image: Georgetown University/Sasaki Strategies

Earlier this evening, Vox received a report that two arrests had been made for an alleged theft at Vital Vittles. According to Corp CEO Elizabeth MacGill (COL ’14) and a witness on the scene, a cashier and a manager identified a suspect matching the description of a man suspected of a Mar. 17 crime and pursued him immediately.

Two employees chased the alleged thief, while another stayed behind to call COO Rashaad Eshack (SFS ’14) and the Department of Public Safety. According to a bystander, the employee tried calling DPS multiple times before they received an answer. When the employee was able to report the incident, she said that it was possible that the suspects were still in the Leavey building.

At 6:48 p.m., Vox saw two individuals being handcuffed in the lobby of the Leavey Center by DPS. One of the individuals arrested may match the descriptions posted in earlier thefts of both cash and goods, a 5’8″ light-skinned black man with a goatee, in a baseball cap, jeans, and a black jacket. He was accompanied by a white woman, 5’2″, petite with brown hair, wearing china blue-patterned pants and a large black jacket. They were taken in handcuffs by two officers to the bus stop outside Darnall, where they were put into a Georgetown University Police car and driven away.

MacGill confirmed that the man who was arrested matched footage from an earlier theft a week and a half ago when he stole an iPad from an employee in the back room, but it is still “hard to confirm” whether the suspects are the same from the earlier incidents. While the woman did not participate in the earlier theft, he entered the store with her during the first incident, and they were found and arrested together this time around. According to MacGill, nothing was stolen during the incident.

“We are happy to report this victory for the company,” MacGill said.

As of this posting, DPS was unavailable for comment. Vox will keep you posted with updates as the story develops.

Additional reporting by Ryan Greene

Update, 4:04 pm: Vox has learned that the man arrested was James McFerguson. A search of D.C. court cases online revealed 43 separate cases against McFerguson stretching back to 1985, though it’s unclear whether all are against the James McFerguson arrested Wednesday.

Original Post: At around 2 p.m. yesterday, plainclothes DPS officers on patrol arrested a man they observed knocking on and trying to open doors of several University townhouses on the 3700 block of Prospect St. Upon searching the suspect’s backpack, officers found several burglar’s tools: boltcutters, knives, and a small crowbar. In coordination with the Metropolitan Police Department, he was transferred and put in jail in MPD’s second district.

According to Georgetown University’s Chief of Police Jay Gruber, the man arrested yesterday does not fit the description of the men accused of recently systematically burglarizing both off-campus student residences and on-campus residence hall locations such as McCarthy Hall. The men fitting that description have not yet been caught, though DPS says they are working with area Universities such as American, Gallaudet, George Washington, and UDC to find the suspects in those cases.

The suspect arrested yesterday was charged with one count of attempted unlawful entry, though he was observed trying multiple doors. He had a bicycle parked nearby the scene and is believed to have been acting alone. The suspect had an extensive criminal record for burglary and breaking and entering. In fact, he was on probation and was wearing an ankle bracelet at the time of his arrest.

Gruber didn’t immediately have the name of the man arrested, though Vox will update this post if we find more information.

In October of this year, there were 35 crimes reported to DPS. Most notably, a male intruder entered an unlocked home just a few blocks away from the main gates of campus, and assaulted two female students when they returned to their house. Among the slew of minor thefts which occurred on campus, five took place in Yates Field House, where students did not properly secure their belongings.

Read on after the jump for a summary of each crime in the month of October.

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Earlier this morning, an attempted robbery took place at the M&T Bank on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. Metropolitan Police officers and the FBI are investigating this robbery alongside last week’s attempted Bank of America break-in, according to the Georgetown Patch.

Araz Alali, Metropolitan Police spokesperson, reported a burglary at 1420 Wisconsin Ave., NW, to the Patch. The police reported that a bank alarm was activated early Friday morning, and the Metropolitan Police arrived on the scene at about 2:00 a.m., at which point the suspect had already vacated the scene. Alali also mentioned the burglary was at an ATM machine in the bank.

The Connecticut Avenue Bank of America robbery, which officials believe may be related to today’s robbery, allegedly caused “significant structural damage,” according to an FBI release.

Photo of caution tape in front of M&T Bank by Rachel Calvert

Vox brings you hear some useful advice on crime news around the area. Georgetown campus and neighborhood are relatively safe, but crime isn’t unheard of.

Hide your laptop, hide your wife

The most common type of crime at  Georgetown is property theft. Laptops and bicycles are the most frequently stolen items and there are several safety measures you can take.

It is important to not leave your laptop unattended for any length of time in a non-secure location.  As long as it is always within your view, you can make sure that no one takes it. Also make sure to lock your room when nobody is inside. While you may only be stepping out for a minute, that is enough time for someone to sneak in and take something.

For bikes, make sure to use a bike lock that locks from the front wheel. It is also recommended that you register your bike as this is potentially the only way to recover a stolen bicycle.

GOCard fraud is another type of property theft. Since merchants rarely check the picture ID, it is easy to steal debit dollars. If your GOCard does go missing, make sure to deactivate it on the GOCard website.

Burglaries are not unheard of around campus and in the larger off-campus areas. To prevent this, it is once again important to lock the doors to your dorm room/apartment even if you are only going to be out for a short period. The majority of the burglaries are results of unlocked doors.

Read the rest of this entry »

Disclaimer: The information provided in this post is not intended to be legal advice, but merely conveys general information related to legal issues commonly encountered by students at Georgetown.

We the people…

Under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the government may not search a person or seize their effects in a place where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, such as a dorm room or a telephone booth, unless a judicial authority grants police or other agents of the state a specific authorization based on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.

Under the Exclusionary Rule, law enforcement may not use evidence against a person if it was obtained during the course of an illegal search.

General exceptions

These include a “stop and frisk” based on reasonable suspicion, seizure of contraband in plain view, search of a place in order prevent an emergency or secure volatile evidence, and searches conducted with the consent of the occupant.

Also, excessive noise, the smell of smoke, or any other indication of a potential safety risk will also allow any agent of the state to enter your room.

Students’ rights in dorms

Students have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their dorms, and the state may not violate it without warrant, period. There is no unified case law, but state and federal courts have held that the Fourth Amendment also applies when university officials are sworn officers of the state [1], they conduct searches accompanied by law enforcement [2], or when their primary purpose in conducting a search is to enforce of local law [3].

However, a housing contract can waive certain Fourth Amendment rights and allow University officials to enforce student conduct policy [4].

Several courts have also held that a university can legally turn over to police any evidence it obtains in the course of a search pursuant to its conduct policy [5].

Read the rest of this entry »

At approximately 2:35 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, a student was robbed between 33rd and Prospect Street. The culprit approached the student from behind, assaulted her, and stole her purse before fleeing the scene.

Though the student only reported the incident to the Department of Safety on Wednesday evening, she immediately reported it to the Metropolican Police Department, who responded to the scene of the crime. MPD is responsible for the investigation and is looking into the incident. The theft comes about one month after a similar assault in the area on May 15.

DPS requests that anyone who has information regarding this incident, or who noticed any suspects before or after the incident, contact them immediately at (202) 687-4343.

At some point between 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. yesterday morning, an apartment in Village A was burglarized, with a student reporting a small amount of cash missing from her wallet. The public safety alert does not specify the nature of the incident, though the vast majority of robberies in the apartment complex have been a result of unlocked doors. Additionally, the victim was not harmed in the incident.

The alert also fails to mention where in Village A the robbery occurred, as apartments with an entrance on Prospect Street were robbed on multiple occasions last year before the Department of Public Safety ramped up security measures in the area.

DPS requests that anyone who has information regarding this incident, or who noticed any suspects before or after the incident, contact them immediately at (202) 687-4343.

A Georgetown employee contacted the Department of Public Safety at approximately 3:30 p.m. today to report a stolen backpack. The backpack, along with the laptop it held, was taken from an unlocked office in the Reiss Science Building. The public safety alert states the employee left the office at around 10:30 this morning and returned five hours later to find the laptop missing.

Today’s theft marks the second laptop theft in Reiss this month, with the other occurring less than two weeks ago. With both incidents, DPS reports that there were no signs of forced entry or physical injury. The Metropolitan Police Department responded to today’s theft and has also taken over investigation of the May 11 burglary.