Thefts Plague the Sophomore Lot

It’s 7:15 p.m. David Sosna walks up to his car parked in the sophomore lot and doesn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. He opens the front door on the driver’s side to first see his face board gone. What is left is torn to shreds.

A face plate, two 200 watt amplifiers and a 15 inch sub woofer were stolen from the trunk of his car. David thinks whoever did it most likely just went down the line of cars to see whose happened to be unlocked.

Sosna is one of the increasing number of sophomores reporting thefts while their cars are in the parking lot.

Students using the sophomore parking lot are seeing things like face plates, iPods and stereo systems disappear straight from the inside of their cars. Since the lot belongs to the city of Prairie Village and isn’t classified as school property students are concerned and confused with policies that leave the school unable to take action in some cases.

Sophomore Polly Haun was seeing the advanced rep show of 1984 after school. Two of her friends had to leave halfway through the show. They thought they would sit in her car until she got out of the show as a joke, but when they got in realized her radio was gone.

“It was so bizarre just to see this big hole in the middle of my car where the radio should be,” Haun said.

When she made her way to her car after the show was over she immediately called her mom. The SRO later had a picture of a radio that she identified to be hers.

Two other sophomores Tyler Rathbun and Connor Knabe had their cars broken into early October on the same day. Tyler had two iPods and his radio stolen, and Connor had an iPod stolen as well along with the face plate of his radio. Both agree that putting up more security cameras would help decrease the the amount of break-ins.

“I think it would be a good idea to put more security cameras up because there are cameras in the junior and senior lots, and I just think that there really needs to be more for the sophomore lot,” Knabe said.

Theft at SM East is an ongoing problem that happens on a weekly basis, from students lockers to their cars.

“We’ll investigate here, but because it really is not school property our SRO [Joel Porter] will do most of the work if not all of the work in terms of the investigation,” Principal Dr. Karl Krawitz said. “We have no jurisdiction…the only thing we could do is if it happened during the school day would be to provide a consequence for not being in class.”

However, theft is not only an issue in the sophomore lots. Dr. Krawitz says that the sophomore lot probably gets hit a lot more because it’s isolated.

“There’s not really a good sight line from anywhere on the property to that lot because it’s up higher than the other lots so it’s tough even though the police station is right nearby,” Dr. Krawitz said.

The only cameras that are placed in view of the sophomore lot are attached to the school and are not very accurate at catching people right on the spot because they are constantly in motion.

“You are either going to get a long view of anything or it’s going to be obstructive because maybe there are trees in the way,” Dr. Krawitz said. “The resolution is just not very good. At a distance you couldn’t make out a person’s face but you don’t get good facial profiling from them or anything like that.”

Dr. Krawitz suggests any removable pieces of equipment that students have within their car like stereo systems and such be removed and hidden.

“You either put it under your seat or lock your car or you put it in your trunk and lock your car,” Dr. Krawitz said.

Porter claims that there are some things that he and Student Resource Officer Richard Pacheco can do to prevent robberies in the sophomore parking lot.

“We’ll go up to that lot and keep an eye on it and when we do hear that crimes have happened we can go back and review footage from the video cameras,” Porter said. “It’s basically a matter of canvasing the area, seeing if there is anybody in the area that saw anything happen and recovering evidence.”

Aside from locking their cars, he advises students to pay attention to what they are leaving in cars. He suggests valuables be hidden and to park as close to the cameras as possible.

“If you are driving to school, it’s not a good idea to show off your stuff–turn off your $3,000 bases before you come pulling into the sophomore lot,” Pacheco said.

Both Pacheco and the principal say that they are doing everything they can to make the sophomore lot more secure.

“The main thing is students have got to start locking their cars,” Dr. Krawitz said. “Believe or not it’s the same problem in the locker rooms. People will not lock their lockers and then they have things stolen. They’ll come in and say ‘I had this stolen.’ Was your locker locked? ‘Uh no.’ It’s the same kind of thing.”