Students on holiday breaks experience a high rate of burglaries
Stewart PerryStudent apartments and houses are becoming prime targets after their tenants have left to celebrate Thanksgiving.
Several students returned to their big city flats after the Thanksgiving break last weekend only to discover their premises had been ransacked and burglarised.
This was the case of Gregg Sussman, a senior journalism major, who returned to his multi-shared house following a break at his New Jersey family home to discover expensive items such as cameras, television sets, iPods, video-game consoles, and a laptop had been stolen during the holiday weekend.
Mr Sussman claimed that his drawers had been left opened, his closet was gutted and his home was littered with stuff.
In urban areas popular with students, holiday breaks often signify holiday break-ins, as most residents in the city head for their hometowns. Adding to the problem is a reduced police presence during winter months since city areas have typically fewer students in that period.
College Park councilwoman Stephanie Stullich has been calling for increased police presence over the winter months for the Maryland city in suburban Washington DC.
According to Mr Sussman, houses are being targeted because whoever broke in knew residents in the Old Town neighborhood were elsewhere.
He said during the Thanksgiving weekend, no cars were his street and no cars in his driveway. No neighbour could witness the burglaries.
Last December also saw a jump in residential break-ins in the Washington DC suburbs of Hyattsville and College Park, with an excess of 100 burglaries during the month, based on crime statistics. December 2008 was the worst in terms of break-ins for the area after July.
Mr Sussman’s housemate, the first to experience the mess in his home, said he heard noise and a car speeding off after he entered his premises. And then saw that the thieves had just been visiting his house as a series of expensive items had been lined-up in a hallway.
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