Holiday breaks see spikes in city burglaries

While students are away, it seems, burglars will play.

After Thanksgiving break, senior journalism major Gregg Sussman returned from his family home in New Jersey to discover expensive belongings — including iPods, video-game consoles, cameras, televisions and a laptop — were stolen over the weekend from the house he shares with four other students.

“My drawers were open; my closet was ripped open; there was stuff everywhere,” he said.

In areas densely populated with students, holiday breaks can be prime time for break-ins, as most residents vacate College Park for their hometowns. But police presence is typically scaled down during winter months because there are fewer students in the city.

Councilwoman Stephanie Stullich, who was re-elected this year, has been an advocate for increased police presence during the winter months.

Sussman said he thinks the house was targeted because whoever broke in knew residents in the Old Town neighborhood were elsewhere.

“There were no cars on my entire street, no cars in the driveway,” he said. “No neighbor to see what was going on.”

Residential break-ins spiked last December, numbering more than 100, according to crime statistics for District 1 — an area including Hyattsville and College Park — on the county police’s website.  It was one of the worst months for residential break-ins for all of 2008, second only to July.

A county police spokesperson said a tally of the total number of burglaries during Thanksgiving break would be available later this week.

Sussman’s housemate — a senior from New York who declined to give his name — said he was the first to arrive back at the rental property, almost catching the burglar in the act.

“When I came in, I noticed something was off because the door was unlocked,” he said. “I figured somebody had just come home before me, until I saw another door unlocked, too. Then I heard noises, and a minute later I heard a car start up and speed off.”

He said he later saw televisions and other belongings lined up in the hallway near an open back door, presumably prepared by the burglar or burglars to carry out of house had the crime not been interrupted. The student then immediately left the house and called 911. He said he filed a report about the crime as soon as police arrived.

Although both County and University Police have concentrated efforts in the past to encourage students to take responsibility for the safety of themselves and their belongings by locking their doors and windows, Sussman and his housemate said they did everything they could to prevent the crime. They claimed they locked all of the house’s external doors and windows before leaving for the holiday weekend.

“The next day, we saw where the robber had ripped out an AC unit and board to climb through a window,” Sussman’s housemate said. “There were sticks and leaves from outside on the ground underneath it.”

Sussman said this wasn’t his first run-in with crime in the city — he and his housemate’s cars have been dented and a side-view mirror was stolen — but he added the break-in still rattled him.

“I was shocked — doors were locked; windows were locked,” he said. “Breaking into a car is one thing, but I was just shocked that someone actually came into the house.”

While the seniors said the loot stolen cost more than enough to classify the crime as a felony, Sussman said his renter’s insurance deductible was too high to actually save him much money.

“All I can think of to do is to take every single thing that’s valuable home,” he said.

apino at umdbk dot com