By Laura Karr
According to UK Police reports from September through November, UK hospital and the W.T. Young Library see the most crime activity on campus.
Areas with heavily-concentrated crime activity include UK Hospital on Rose Street, Commonwealth Stadium on University Drive and the W.T. Young Library on Hilltop Avenue. Most of these crimes are theft, suspicious activity and intoxication violations.
The area of the hospital on South Limestone also sees a high amount of crime, according to the crime reports.
Despite repeated offenses in specific areas, patrolling them is business as usual.
Interim Police Chief Maj. Joe Monroe said in the highly-concentrated areas of crime, patrols are random and unchanged.
“Police and security officers both conduct random patrols,†Monroe said.
The majority of the reports are for theft, Monroe said.
At 330 Hilltop Ave., in front of Haggin Hall, five marijuana-related offenses were reported in October alone.
Also on Hilltop, in front of the W.T. Young Library, the crimes most often repeated include suspicious activity, theft and criminal mischief.
Devin Horton, security guard for the W.T. Young Library for about a year, said the crimes he sees the most are thefts of laptop computers, which he said he sees about every two weeks.
Security guards do routine patrols around the library’s premises, Horton said, and he tries to patrol about every hour.
Other crimes reported most often include marijuana-related crimes and animal mischief.
Horton said he has never seen anyone using marijuana, but said he has heard of animal behavior, or “student pranks.â€
“I had someone take two mice, put them in Dixie cups with parachutes and drop them all the way from the fifth floor,â€â€ˆHorton said.
Staff reporter Katie Perkowski contributed to this report.
The Kernel uncorrectly spins/infers this story as the Police not doing their job. If the Kernel gave the true relection of Police patrols through factual crime mapping, they would see that all areas of U.K. campus are patrolled constantly. Most thefts obviously occur, because of the incredible amount of human dishonesty. But mostly the true reason is,that people do not take care of their belongings, thus allowing themselves to become victims. This happens every day all over the world, no matter how strong or weak law enforcement procedure is conducted.
I didn’t see an inference in the article that the police weren’t doing their job. I thought that the author was merely describing WHAT the police were doing about the problem.
I think, though, that a warning about leaving purses, laptops, etc. should have been included. I learned that lesson the hard way: I had my wallet stolen out of my bag on the 10th floor of POT. I left the room – during evening hours, too – to go to the bathroom (gone no more than 15 minutes max!). I didn’t realize what had happened until hours later. Greedy dishonest people are everywhere (BTW, the thief was caught).