Be Watchful; Protect Valuables
Think your valuables are safe on campus? You may want to think again.
Several cars have been broken into in RVCC parking lots since the beginning of spring semester. Students here lost thousands of dollars in personal belongings. During a single day in February, valuables estimated at more than $2,000 were stolen from three different vehicles.
According to Safety and Facilities Manager Reinhold Woykowski, that spree might have been the work of a team of thieves because it happened over a short period of time. It was morning, he said, and occurred despite the fact that there were plenty of people around.
One vehicle’s door was jimmied open and its Global Positioning System, valued at seven hundred dollars, was stolen. Not much later, a police cadet’s vehicle was broken into in lot #5. “She had about four thousand to five thousand dollars of tools stolen,” Woykowski said.
Thieves smashed a window to get inside the third vehicle, Woykowski said. Two hundred dollars of personal belongings were taken from that car, as well as a navigation device valued at six hundred dollars.
Although all three incidents happened during school hours, he said, no one reported seeing anything unusual and the thieves have not been caught.
“Cars and parking lots are our biggest issues,” he said. People tempt thieves by leaving valuables in sight on the seats or floor of their vehicles. Laptop computers are typical. These are high-priced items that should not be left in the car.
“We have to try to keep people safe, even our guests,” he said. Parking lots are checked by security personnel in the field and by others in the security office who continually scan monitors that display the lots via 12 surveillance cameras. Still, security is the responsibility of the entire community.
“If someone sees a student struggling to get the car door open they would think nothing of it…they would think that it was that person’s car,” Woykowski said. But it might just be a thief.
Report suspicious behavior, in the parking lot or elsewhere on school grounds, to the security office: (908) 526-4994 or (908) 526-1200 ext. 8370.