The Nevada Sagebrush

When Cortney Tuggle parked her car near campus on Oct. 31 she thought she had taken all the necessary precautions to keep her car safe. She removed all valuables and locked her doors.

Two days later she walked up to her car to find her window smashed in.

Tuggle is not the only student who had her car broken into over the past month. The University of Nevada, Reno Police Department reported an increase of vehicle burglaries during the last week of October and early November.

From Oct. 17 to Nov. 6, there were nine reported vehicle burglaries on campus, said Lt. Ed Rinne of UNRPD.

Those three weeks had the highest amount of reported vehicle thefts for the year, Rinne said.

Due to the increase in vandalism and theft, UNRPD  kicked up the security level. There are more police patrolling the areas of high crime rates, Rinne said.

“We can’t be there 24-7, but we try as much as possible,”Rinne said.

Rinne said that police will go down to parking garages in between calls to keep the area more secure.

The increased security has been working.  Since Oct 27, there have been no reported on-campus vehicle thefts and burglaries.

In the Reno area, 24 vehicle burglaries were reported to the Reno Police Department during October, the lowest amount in a year, said Lt. Ronald Donnelly of RPD.

Donnelly said 24 was only the number of burglaries that were reported, and said there could have been many others that were not reported.

Amber Nahirney, a 21-year-old Spanish major, said when her car was broken into on Nov. 1, she called to report the crime, but nobody from the police department answered.

“I called three times to report it,”Nahirney said. “I called at around 10 a.m., 1 p.m. and once more later in the day.  Nobody ever answered, so I just stopped calling.”

The police have no suspects yet, but believe that it’s a group of one to three people behind the break-ins, Rinne said.

“When you have 24 crimes, it’s not going to be 24 different people behind them,”

Donnelly said.

Seven of the nine burglaries happened in the Sierra Street Parking Complex near the dorms, Rinne said.

Rinne said the reason for the increase can be attributed to people becoming more “forgetful and lackadaisical”about their cars.

The motive behind most theft is people wanting to steal big ticket items like iPods and GPS systems, Rinne said.

“Thieves go from vehicle to vehicle looking for something they want. Once they find something of value they’ll try to get it,”Rinne said.

Tuggle said only about $1 in loose change was missing.

“They went through everything, the glove department, the back seats,”said Tuggle, a 20-year-old undeclared major. “They messed everything up, but only took about a $1 in loose change.”

Nahirney said that her stereo and CDs were in the car at the time of the robbery, but the thieves opted to steal only 50 cents.

“I paid $150 so they could steal some change,”Nahirney said.

The police said the majority of vehicle theft and vandalism takes place in parking garages at night.

“There are peaks in parking garages and lots,”Donnelly said “You could see clusters in apartment complexes because windows face away from parking lots because nobody wants to look at parking lot. So nobody is looking at what’s going on. This allows breaking in to happen.”

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