Car prowlings down; peeping tom seen

By Krista Harvey

Packages were long unwrapped and put away as University of Calgary students found themselves back at work in January. Car prowlers, however, seemed to take some time off during the month, which is quite a contrast to December. According to Campus Security Manager Lanny Fritz, January was a relatively quiet month on campus, with only two major highlights.

“Our car prowlings are way down,” said Fritz. “The month of December, we had 31 car prowlings… the month of January [had only] three car prowlings.”

Only $900 worth of valuables were taken in January compared to $17,000 in December.

“A lot of it has to do with the Christmas season being over, because car prowlers are often motivated throughout the Christmas season to take valuables from cars because people have left their Christmas shopping in their vehicles,” Fritz said.

“We also believe that the car prowler that we strongly suspected [who] targets us here at the university is now in jail,” Fritz added.

The other major incident that took place last month on campus was a peeping tom. On Jan. 17 at Cascade Hall, a suspect was found looking through a couple of different windows. Fritz explained that when the suspect was then confronted by a person in residence, he explained that he was just out looking for his lost dog and left.

“The guy we are looking for is a Caucasian male about 40 years of age, six feet [tall], [with] long, blonde, shaggy hair, heavy set, wearing sweatpants and a waist length coat,” Fritz said. He emphasized that students who witness such a situation should contact Campus Security right away to minimize the danger of such a confrontation.

“We get about half a dozen peeping tom incidents a year,” said Fritz. “Almost exclusively they are off-campus people that come onto campus.”

Due to some bad weather this season, the door on the east side of MacEwan Hall was locked for one or two days. Fritz, however, said he did not receive any complaints from students about the locked door.

Once again, students are encouraged to contact Campus Security if they observe anything out of the ordinary, or want to use the Safewalk program. Campus Security can be reached at 220-5333.