Officials in the College of Fine Arts have received numerous complaints of wallet and carrying bag thefts in the college over the last six months, spurring a Boston University Police Department investigation into the matter, CFA spokeswoman Elly Muller said yesterday.
Boston University Police Department Sargent Jack St. Hilaire said yesterday a warrant has been issued for one suspect who has previously been arrested, but no arrests have been made. He declined to comment further on the suspect, as the investigation is still underway.
Muller said the school has installed more modern security cameras and added uniformed and plainclothes police officers to patrol the school.
‘We have made a significant investment in automated security,’ said Michael Hathaway, director of operations for the office of the Executive Vice President. ‘We have caught [criminals in the past] and prosecuted them.’
But CFA freshman Nikki Miller, who said wallet was stolen last week while her class briefly left the room, said the measures have not gone far enough.
‘The security isn’t all that wonderful,’ Miller said, referencing a side entrance door that always unlocked as an example. ‘I’ve gone there at midnight and the door was open.’
But Hathaway said having doors to the school open late has not contributed to the recent thefts.
‘That is a moot point,’ Hathaway said about the door. ‘The robberies all happened during normal business hours.’
Muller said the door had been ‘tampered with’ over winter intercession, ‘but it was fixed as soon as it was realized.’
Miller speculated that the thefts were committed by a seasoned veteran, as her wallet and several of her classmates’ were stolen while the class was out of the room for a short time, she said.
‘Somebody had to know how the system worked,’ she said. ‘We do a critique for only so long and then go back. They came at the right time.’
Miller said the BUPD was ‘good when I told them that my wallet was stolen,’ referring to a same-day questioning by an officer and a follow-up interview by a detective the next day.
Miller’s classmate, Amanda Granum, agreed and added the BUPD quickly responded when a friend of hers called and reported a man who looked like the one pictured in warning signs around the school.
Granum also reported her wallet missing, in addition to her passport, with a sticker on it indicating her duel citizenship in the United States and Great Britain.
‘I have to apply for a new passport, and will probably have to go back to England to replace the sticker,’ she said. ‘It is issued by English government.’
‘We have suspects,’ Hathaway said, adding better lighting and locks have also been added to CFA security. ‘This is something we take very seriously, we hit it hard.’
In the meantime, BU spokesman Colin Riley said a good security system is dependent on many factors, including ‘people not separating themselves from their belongings.’
Muller agreed that unattended items were the main targets of theft and CFA’s message to students centers on ‘the importance of awareness.’
‘I had no idea there was a theft problem until it happened to me,’ Miller said. ‘Hopefully somebody will get this person.’
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