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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OK, so this isn’t something you need to watch out for at the moment—dozens of Metro stations are closed and even if you’re using the underground rail, where are you going?

But when D.C. pulls itself back together, keep an eye out for potential thieves on the Metro when you’re riding to a basketball game or internship. The Washington Examiner reports that in the first 11 months of 2009, robberies on the Metro skyrocketed to 805 thefts from 538 over the same period in 2008.

And 2007, the same period saw only 397 thefts—which means that robberies on the Metro have essentially doubled in two years.

Driving the rise in theft, Chief of Police Jeff Delinski told the Examiner, are suspects who grab electronic devices like iPods and BlackBerries out of people’s hands.

“In many cases, a robber will grab an iPod or cell phone from a rider just before train doors close at a Metro station,” the article says. “The crime isn’t reported until the victim reaches the next station and by then, the robber has gotten away.”

In April, transit police began placing undercover agents on Metro cars to arrest criminals who snatched electronics (or committed other crimes) but they can’t be everywhere. So watch your iPhone.

Via DCist.

Photo from Flickr user WisDoc used under a Creative Commons license.

On Sunday, a man who had shoplifted merchandise from the University Bookstore fell off the Leavey Center pedestrian bridge during his attempt to flee the scene. The incident happened on a Sunday afternoon, after the suspect had been confronted for trying to steal from the bookstore, University Spokesperson Andy Pino wrote in an e-mail.

A Department of Public Safety investigator who spoke on the condition of anonymity told Vox that the man was not a student, nor does he have any connection to the University. Pino and Rocco DelMonaco, the vice president for University safety, said that the suspect sustained injuries while trying to escape that needed hospital attention. DPS has turned the case over to the Metropolitan Police Department, which has not responded to requests for comment.

Update: Joseph Smith, the associate director of the Public Safety Department, sent more details in an e-mail: “According to witnesses, the perpetrator had attempted to steal two text books valued at $177 dollars each from the Leavey Book Store. He allegedly fled from the bookstore, dropped a duffel bag containing the books, and jumped over the side of the bridge.”

Based on interviews with four University sources, Vox originally reported that the suspect jumped off the bridge. Eyewitnesses have since told the Voice that the suspect fell attempting to climb down the bridge. The post has been altered to reflect the new information.

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.

Georgetown got a taste of vigilante detective work last March, when Joseph Combs (COL ‘10) caught Simon Wu (MSB ‘11), who had stolen Combs’s iPod from a party. Wu had tried to sell the stolen iPod on Craigslist, and Combs had posed as a buyer. Combs set up a sting, and on March 24, Wu was arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department.

Since then, Wu has been on an eight-month journey through DC’s criminal justice system. After being released from jail without bail, Wu was charged in April with second degree theft. The charging documents accuse Wu of acting “with the intent to appropriate the [iPod] for his own use,” but, alas, fail to note Combs’s detective abilities.

On May 19, he entered into a six-month First Time Offender Agreement with the United States Attorney, where he admitted his guilt and agreed to a series of punishments.

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View November 2009 in a larger map

Crime was down significantly from October, when 52 incidents were recorded in the Department of Public Safety’s Daily Crime Log. In November’s crime log (PDF), there were 28 incidents reported. Here’s a breakdown of what was in the log:

• In November, there were 18 thefts reported to DPS, and three burglaries that resulted in theft. Almost all of the theft incidents took place in classrooms or public spaces, and the three burglaries occurring in Village A, McCarthy, and Yates.

  In six cases, wallets or cash went missing; four laptops, two cell phones, and an assortment of other items—a GOCard, laundry, a jacket, a backpack full of notebooks, a makeup bag—were purloined, too. One of the laptops was taken in a burglary. Another burglary took place in Village A, where a suspect broke in and stole a television, and the third burglary was the break-in and assault at Yates, where robbers made off with $7,500 in cash and threw security cameras in the pool.

  Not everything that got stolen last month was lost forever. On Saturday, November 24, a suspect stole a bicycle that wasn’t locked from the ICC area and fled, only to abandon the bicycle at the front gates.

• Aside from the break-in at Yates, last month’s most disconcerting crime was a crime of voyeurism. A small camera was found attached to a soap dispenser in the Student Health Center. In an e-mail, Associate Director of DPS Joseph Smith said that he could not comment on whether there were any suspects as this case is still an “active investigation,” nor could he go into any more detail about the incident.

• The homophobic graffiti found in Copley Hall, which according to The Hoya was the fifth bias-related incident reported to DPS since late October, accounted for the one incident of vandalism that occurred in November.

• There was one case of unlawful entry, in which a person who had been barred from entering Lauinger Library was booted from the Library again and barred from campus.

• Four drug violations were recorded at the beginning of the month. In all cases, it seems that the perpetrators had left the area before DPS arrived and found their drugs or “drug paraphernalia.” In one case, the substance found was identified as marijuana.

As we mentioned in our GUSA Roundup earlier today, there were a series of thefts in McCarthy the evening of Halloween.

According to Joseph Smith, the Associate Director of the Department of Public Safety, there were seven separate victims in McCarthy.  Items stolen include “laptops, cell phones, an ipod, shoes, and sunglasses.”

Smith says the investigation is ongoing, and DPS is working with the Metropolitan Police Department on it.

This isn’t the first time the Southwest Quad has been the target of serial thieves recently; there were two separate theft sprees in the Quad this July.

Recently, in an effort to make North Kehoe a better environment for athletic competitions, the field was decorated with new banners. However, just two weeks after the banners were put up, three of them have been stolen. Brian Wiese and Dave Nolan, the coaches for the Men’s and Women’s Soccer teams respectively, are pretty upset about the theft.

Both their teams play on the field and helped raise money for the banners. The coaches are so irritated that they have released the following open letter to the Georgetown community:

Dave and I write to you today with a real sense of disappointment. I’ve coached the men’s soccer program here at Georgetown for the past four years, Dave has coached the women’s soccer program for six years and we’ve always appreciated the support shown for our teams. The Georgetown students have been great – vocal, enthusiastic and involved and it has been a major factor in the success we’ve enjoyed. So why are we disappointed?

Within two weeks of decorating the field, three banners have been stolen from North Kehoe. Two 6X10 banners (Jack and the Georgetown G) as well as an 8×68 foot windscreen proclaiming “North Kehoe Field, Home of the Hoyas”.

Dave and I and the members of both our teams were involved in fundraising to pay for those banners in order to dress up our home field, hoping to both make a better environment for competition and to give recruits a better impression of Georgetown. We hoped to capitalize upon and add to student spirit as they root for the Hoyas. Now somebody has taken them. I don’t know if it was a joke, but nobody’s laughing. I don’t know if it was a prank, but nobody here is enjoying it. I don’t know if it was supposed to be cool, but it is not.

Read the rest of the letter after the jump!

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I bet this bike wasn’t registered…

The Department of Public Safety’s bike registration program was introduced in March in with some very noble goals: to help DPS more effectively manage the number of bikes on campus, to make it easier for police to return stolen bikes to their owners, and to deter criminals from stealing bikes in the first place.

Unfortunately, the student response has been pretty underwhelming: a grand total of 20 bikes have been registered and 12 bike locks have been sold through the program since June, according to Associate Director of DPS Joseph Smith.

Smith wrote in an e-mail that the tepid response to the program limits its effectiveness.

It’s too early into the academic year to say how much impact the program has had on theft, but with only 20 students registering their bikes thus far I think it would be safe to conjecture that the program would be a lot more effective if we had greater participation from the students.

Smith said he wasn’t sure making the program mandatory would be a good idea, and that he thought more voluntary participation would be preferable.

Photo from Flickr user Mr. Spinch, used under a Creative Commons license.