by Cheyenne Schoen |
A series of recent car break-ins and thefts targeting both students and faculty has prompted Public Safety to remind the community about safety practices.
One of these reminders includes not leaving valuables in vulnerable places and locking all car and office doors when leaving.
Public Safety Director Gerald Gregg announced in an email to faculty, staff and students Thursday that two incidents of theft were reported this week. The thefts occurred in Buckley Center on Wednesday and Thursday, where items including an iPad were stolen from unoccupied and unlocked offices.
Additionally, two cars parked behind Christie Hall were broken into last week. One of the cars belonged to a faculty member, whose back window was broken out and a laptop was stolen. The other car belonged to a student who had left a bag in the car.
“This is not specific to campus,” Gregg said. “These are crimes of opportunity. If they see something that’s an easy grab, they do it.”
Additionally, the Office of Public Safety is planning a lockdown drill that will occur some time this semester. Students and faculty will know well in advance the day of the drill, but they may or may not know the exact time of the drill.
“We don’t have many fires,” Gregg said. “But we routinely have fire drills. And it just makes sense, in today’s environment, that we would, on occasion, practice a lockdown drill so if we ever went into lockdown it wasn’t foreign to people.”
An emergency exercise notification will go out to all members of the UP community via text, email and speakerphone.
“If they get a text message or an email or we announce over the desk phone speakers, ‘This is an emergency exercise, repeat this is an emergency exercise,’ you are to shelter in place and lockdown until further notice,” Gregg said. “What I don’t want to have happen is have people going out into the hallway like, ‘What’s going on?’ I want people to shelter in place, just so if it ever happens, God forbid it does, but if it should, they think, ‘Oh yeah, I remember that means I go over in that corner away from the windows, close the door, lock it, and close the blinds.’”
Cheyenne is a reporter at The Beacon. She can be reached at schoen17@up.edu.
