Throughout the past week Georgetown students have been plagued by a series of burglaries throughout campus. Preying on unlocked offices and resident halls, what is suspected to be a single group of thieves has made off with a variety of valuables, including wallets, cell phones and laptops.

DPS has put considerable effort into tracking down the perpetrators, who, according to DPS Chief of Police Jay Gruber, have been active at numerous college campuses throughout the District, including American University . “We have quite a few leads and we are working with other university police departments in the District,” said Gruber. “We know who some of these suspects are. It’s just a matter of finding them on our campus and placing them under arrest.”

College campuses are an ideal niche for thieves such as these to operate: the isolated nature of campus life creates a false sense of security that prompts students to leave valuable devices unattended and their doors unlocked.

Burglars, says Gruber, are all too aware of this. This most recent string of thefts is one in a long line campus burglaries carried out by individuals who raid residence halls because they are low-risk, high-profit goldmines of high-demand commodities such as laptops.

“We want to make the university a harder target,” said Gruber. “I can’t put a fence around the university with locks on it. I’m depending on people in residence halls not to allow people in they don’t know. I’m counting on people to lock their doors.”

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Jay Gruber, Assistant Director of Public Safety and Assistant Chief of Police at the University of Maryland, will assume his position as Georgetown’s next Department of Public Safety Chief of Police, effective July 30, 2012. Erik Smulson, Vice President for Public Affairs, announced the new Chief of Police in an email earlier today.

The news comes about two weeks after an announcement from Smulson that DPS Chief Rocco DelMonaco would resign by the end of June.

Gruber is also a University of Maryland graduate, with a bachelor’s degree in law enforcement and a master’s in applied management. Alongside his extensive background experience in the field of criminal justice, he completed a graduate certificate in Homeland Security Management. He is also an FBI Police Executive Fellow.

“Jay understands the unique dynamics facing university campuses, and I am confident that he will be an excellent leader for the Department of Public Safety and a contributing member of the Georgetown community,” Smulson said in the email. As of now, there’s no promise that we’ll get to see a continuation of Rocky’s Reports.

Photo from Educause