Listen Here
By Victoria Hansen
hansenv@findlay.edu
On August 28, a University of Findlay student reported that a suspect had broken into their car that was left unlocked and unattended in the parking by one of the UF-owned houses. The suspect was reported to have stolen multiple items, including a pair of earbuds, according to Campus Safety and University Police. Four days later, a campus-wide email announced that the suspect had been apprehended,
“The owner was actually able to ping her earbuds to Riverside Park in the City of Findlay,” Spraw said. “She had the serial number, which helped the officer because he was able to approach him (the suspect), ask him to hand over the earbuds, and they had the serial number on them.”
The suspect was arrested for receiving stolen property, as the footage was not clear whether the suspect was the one who stole them, but it was clear that the suspect had the stolen earbuds.
“If you have something, make sure you record the serial numbers by taking a picture of it or writing it down,” Spraw said. “For the courts, there’s no better way to say that that’s your laptop than ‘this is the serial number that I gave to the police.'”
Spraw warned that if the serial number is not provided to the police, it can be much harder to recover stolen goods.
“Someone can’t say ‘Oh, I just thought these were mine,” Spraw said. “That’s not going to hold up in court.”
Along with recording serial numbers, the most important part of vehicle safety is making sure your car is not an appealing target.
“The best thing to do is lock your car and don’t keep anything you deem valuable inside,” Captain of Campus Police John Dunbar said. “Not your phone, not your laptop, nothing.”
Spraw says the majority of car break-ins are from unlocked cars.
“They’re not breaking windows,” Dunbar said.
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen a window broken,” Spraw said. “They just juggle the handle and hope that it’s unlocked, and sometimes they get lucky.”
Every year, one or two cars are broken into at UF, almost always by people who are not UF students, faculty, or staff.
“They’re just passing through and see a lot full of victims,” Spraw said. “It’s usually 2 a.m. and dark out, and they hope they can’t get caught.”
“We see them on camera, but that doesn’t mean we can always identify them,” Spraw said. “But we might know them from previous dealings.”
Both Spraw and Dunbar also say that students with bicycles, e-bikes, and e-scooters should lock these vehicles to a bike rack before leaving them.
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything stolen that was locked up,” Dunbar said. “A criminal comes along and sees one scooter locked, one unlocked; they’re grabbing the unlocked one and going away.”
Dunbar says that the most important part of keeping vehicles on campus secure is to keep campus security in the loop if anything goes wrong.
“If you see something, say something, and that could be anything,” Dunbar said. “We’d rather you call us and have it be legit than the other way around.”
“Don’t be afraid to call us. That’s what we’re here for,” Dunbar said.
