The Rice Thresher, Vol. 88, No. 30, Ed. 1 Friday, May 25, 2001 Page: 4 of 32
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THE RICE THRESHER NEWS FRIDAY, MAY 25,2001
—
POLICE BLOTTER
The following Incidents were reported to the University Police for the
period April 24-May 20. Items were omitted due to space constraints.
Residential Colleges
Sid Richardson College April 24
Wiess College April 28
Sid Richardson College May 3
Will Rice College
Will Rice College
Hanszen College
Academic Buildings
Anderson Hall
Mudd Lab
Herman Brown
Keck Hall
Shepherd School
Lovett Hall
George R. Brown
Anderson Hall
Other Buildings
Campus Store
Greenbriar Building
Rice Media Center
Autry Court
Stadium
Parking Lots
West Stadium Lot
East Stadium Lot
East Stadium lot
East Stadium Lot
West Stadium Lot
Other Areas
Laboratory Road
Laboratory Road
University Police
May 4
May 6
May 8
April 25
May 1
May 3
May 7
May 10
May 11
May 16
May 16
April 25
May 4
May 14
West Stadium Lot May 15
Debit card stolen from Sid Rich
Commons.
CDs stolen from student's room.
Disturbance between two students
on balcony reported. One student
was banned from the residential
area by the masters and was
escorted to his vehicle.
Bicycle stolen.
Money and watches stolen from
room.
Vehicle damaged while parked in
residential lot.
Vacuum cleaner stolen from closet.
Officer stopped vehicle due to strong
smell of marijuana. Student
admitted to smoking marijuana and
had 1 gram of marijuana cigarette.
Subject released, and a report was
filed and referred to University Court.
Three books stolen from offices.
Money bag and money stolen from
room 129.
Visitor's daughter's wallet stolen
from her backpack in concert hall.
Staff member's wallet and day
planner taken from the Welcome
Center office.
Wallet stolen from room W117.
Cell phone stolen.
Suspicious man attempted to
defraud cashier. Subject arrested
for fraud and transported to Harris
County Jail. Subject also had
numerous outstanding warrants
from around the United States,
including one felony warrant. Subject
entered store with nothing and later
wanted a refund on some books,
which he picked up in the store.
Money stolen from room 102.
Graffiti on wall outside of building
reported.
May 16 _ Money stolen from wallet at gym.
May 17 Wallet stolen.
April 25 CD player and CDs stolen from
vehicle.
April 27 Burglary of a motor vehicle in
residential section.
April 29 Student reported battery charger
from ADA golf cart had been stolen
approximately a week and a half
earlier.
May 1 Two-car minor accident in East
Stadium Lot. Municipal Citation
issued to driver with no insurance.
May 8 Report of failure to stop and give
information and burglary of motor
vehicle taken on vehicles in West
Stadium Lot.
Two juveniles — one male, one
female — caught attempting to
burglarize vehicles. The subjects'
vehicle was inventoried and towed.
Criminal Trespass Warnings were
issued to both juveniles, and they
were released to responsible adults.
April 27 Previously booted student
threatened ticket writer. Subject
transported to station, report filed,
subject released.
May 20 Traffic stop for possible DWI. Subject
was slightly intoxicated and passed
a field sobriety test.
May 10 Wallet stolen.
Police tow cars from reserved area
By Elizabeth Decker
THRESHKR STAFF
Police towed more than 20 ve-
hicles from the Allen Center/Cohen
House Lot April 28 for parking in the
restricted areas near Cohen House
and the 24-hour reserved faculty
spaces.
The vehicles were moved to the
stadium, rather than to an off-cam-
pus lot. Students were charged $37
for the towing and given a $15 ticket
for parking in a'restricted area.
Students are allowed to park in
the Cohen House section of the lot
from 10 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. on week-
days and from 10 p.m. to 10 a.m. on
weekends. Six spaces in Lot M are
reserved for faculty and staff 24 hours
a day.
Warning notices were posted in
residential colleges Friday afternoon
and evening saying that cars would
be towed if not moved from the
Cohen Hou se portion of the lot by 10
a.m. Saturday. Notices were also
placed on vehicles in the north and
south college lots and the Allen Cen-
ter and Cohen House lots Saturday
morning. As 10 a.m. approached,
officers walked through the colleges
warning students that cars were
about to be towed, University Police
Chief Bill Taylor said.
The police department had re-
ceived many complaints that the
Cohen House spaces were not being
kept open for the special events held
there, Taylor said.
Taylor said police were also re-
ceiving complaints from faculty and
staff regarding the 24-hour reserved
spaces. Faculty and staff pay $220
for those permits, making Lot M the
most expensive on campus.
"Faculty and staff were sending e-
mails and complaining, and would
come in and there was nowhere for
them to park and were having to
park out in the stadium lot," Taylor
said. "Here they are coming in on the
weekends to do extra work to make
things work right, and they couldn't
even park in the lot they're paying a
fair amount of money to park in."
Taylor said loose enforcement of
the parking regulations regarding
the 24-hour reserved spaces and the
Cohen House spaces was one rea-
son for the difficulties experienced
by faculty and staff.
"Basically what had happened
was during this semester we'd not
been real strict, as a matter of fact
we've pretty much been not enforc-
ing over In the Allen Center lot, and
we were getting continuous com-
plaints from faculty and staff that
when they were coming in on Satur-
days on Sundays to work or in the
evenings to work that they couldn't
find parking spaces," Taylor said.
Baker College freshman John
Peek, whose car was towed, said
lack of enforcement in those areas
of the lot made him unsure whether
it was legal or not to park in the
Cohen House section of the lot.
"Well, I thought | it was illegal ] at
the beginning of the year, but then
after they let me park there rather
than giving me a ticket for months
on end, I was beginning to think
maybe they changed the rule," Peek
said.
Brown College junior Simi Gupta,
whose car was also towed, said it
MARK BERENSON/THRESHER
University Police tow cars parked illegally in the Cohen House/Allen Center
Lot April 28 in order to free spaces for employees working weekends.
was too dramatic of a step to in-
crease enforcement from no enforce-
ment directly to towing.
"My thing is that it's not [that]
big of a deal if they ticket it, because
if we're not supposed to park there,
then they should have ticketed,"
Gupta said. "It's the fact that they
started towing without telling any-
one, and that they've never ticketed
before. They were trying to make a
point, but you can't just go from not
ticketing to towing."
'They were trying to
make a point, but you
can't just go from not
ticketing to towing.'
— Simi Gupta
Brown College junior
Taylor said the loose enforcement
was clue to an earlier shortage of park-
ing enforcers and a deliberate choice
to focus on other programs. Currently
the department has two employees
who enforce parking regulations, but
the department was operating with
only one for most of this year.
"Frankly, there wasn't a major
problem. If people were respecting
what was going on, we weren't go-
ing to worry about it that much,"
Taylor said.
Because of the loose enforcement
this year, Peek said a longer notifica-
tion period would have helped, in-
stead of placing notices on cars the
same day they would be towed.
Gupta said it was especially diffi-
cult for off-campus students to learn
about the plans because warnings
were only posted in the colleges,
and no e-mails were sent.
Taylor said a copy of the parking
regulations is given to every student
upon vehicle registration and that
the regulations are posted online
(http://rupd. rice. edu/Parkingregs
■pdf).
Taylor said next year the regula-
tions will be more consistently en-
forced from the beginning to avoid
this problem.
"It wasn't the best timing," Tay-
lor said. "I'd have preferred if we had
gotten the message across sooner,
but we will probably have to be more
consistent early on next year."
Taylor said the root of the park-
ing problem is the shortage of park-
ing on campus, especially near the
residential colleges. Because of con-
struction. the Jones College lot and
Hanszen College lot have been elimi-
nated, contributing to the perma-
nent loss of over 700 parking spaces
on the east end of campus.
"Unfortunately it's not going to
change. It's going to be tight from
here on out, and people are all going
to have to learn to live with the cur-
rent situation," Taylor said. "We just
don't have the same amount of park-
ing that we used to have in that area."
Taylor said parking illegally only
exacerbates the parking shortage
by displacing someone else.
"If somebody parks their car in
an area where they're not permitted
... it means that somebody that has a
permit for that area can't park there,"
Taylor said. "There is no open park-
ing on the front of this campus. Ev-
ery space is accounted for."
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Liu, Leslie & Reichle, Robert. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 88, No. 30, Ed. 1 Friday, May 25, 2001, newspaper, May 25, 2001; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth443114/m1/4/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.