The website of Syracuse University’s Department of Public Safety lists several tips for staying safe. (http://publicsafety.syr.edu/)
This is not how 27-year-old Hadeel Alhaddadeh expected her new college life to start.
It was in July, 2012, and Alhaddadeh had just began her graduate study at Syracuse University. She was doing homework at around 3 a.m. in the dining room of her apartment at Lancaster Avenue. She first heard a cracking noise and then saw a dark shadow creeping through an open bedroom window.
“I started screaming. I have no idea where I got that voice,” said Alhaddadeh.
When Alhaddadeh regained her composure, the shadow was gone. So was her iPhone on the bedroom desk.
Alhaddadeh is among one of the 321 residents living in Syracuse’s southeast area, east of I-81 and south of East Erie Boulevard, who reported burglaries from January to November 2012.
In 2012, the city’s southeast neighborhood, which includes University Hill and Westcott, suffered a 57 percent spike in reports of burglaries. That is the highest among all four of the city’s neighborhoods. In comparison, burglary reports in the northeast district grew by 12 percent, while the southwest community reported a decrease of 7 percent.
At the same time, the number of burglary reports on the Syracuse University campus rose from 19 in 2011 to 25 in 2012, according to SU’s Department of Public Safety.
City police officer Joe Evans, who serves at the Syracuse Police Department Community Police Center at South Salina Street, admits that the university community is hit more often by burglaries than other neighborhoods.
“Southeast is a college-campus area. And burglaries usually increase during the time when students are gone for the breaks. That’s a typical pattern,” said Evans. “But most of the burglaries can be prevented or deterred.”
Some of the common measures to prevent burglary or soften its damage include:
- Lock doors and windows, even when you are at home.
- Have a dog or equip your house with burglar alarms.
- Create extra lightning both outside and inside your house with devices like light timer, which can automatically turn on and off lights at designated times.
- Buy renters insurance if you don’t own the house because recovering financial damages can be difficult and time-consuming.
At Syracuse University, John Sardino, associate chief of the Department of Public Safety, said that SU’s crime rate is not uncommon among college areas in the country. “When you look at big private colleges that also abut densely-populated cities, the number of crimes we have is about the average,” said Sardino.
Most burglaries in the University neighborhood, said Sardino, happened during the morning from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., after students have left for classes. Very few of the burglaries involved personal attacks. And in almost 85 percent of the student-related burglaries, the doors were left unlocked.
“People who commit burglaries know students are more likely to keep their property unattended than other full-time residents,” said Sardino.
Unlocked doors also make it hard for police to catch the burglars and residents to recover financial damages because little evidence of force entry is left. Since most of the thieves are about the same age of college students, they can easily leave the scene with a backpack with no one noticing them. Those who do get caught, Sardino said, are often serial burglars who can be connected to over ten cases.
For burglarized grad student Alhaddadeh, the frightening encounter with the burglar has made her more vigilant. She now has moved to a modern apartment complex with electronic locks. But she still worries.
“The other day I received an email saying someone stole two laptops in the library, but they somehow caught the person,” said Alhaddadeh. “There is nothing called safe here.”
(Maya Gao Qian is a graduate student in magazine, newspaper and online journalism.)
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