Beginning this week, there will be an increased number of police and security officers on and near the University of Pennsylvania campus, according to an announcement by Provost Vincent Price and Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli. There have been a few armed robberies on and near campus in the past week, including a daytime gunpoint robbery at a food cart at 38th and Walnut on Tuesday.
“Numerous additional overtime shifts have been added and other patrols have been redeployed to higher risk areas to ensure a visible police presence that we hope will deter any criminal activity. In addition, undercover police will be monitoring any suspicious activity around campus. We have also increased CCTV Virtual Video Patrols through our 120 Pan, Tilt, Zoom CCTV cameras on- and off-campus,” message reads.
December 20th, 2012 at 10:53 am
It seems to me that lots of these recent crimes are about high-end phones. While I know that everyone is on the phone all the time now, it might be safer not to be, at least while in full view of others in a situation you can’t control. Not blaming the victim, of course, but just trying to be smart.
December 21st, 2012 at 2:25 pm
Yes, Christina we should all be thinking about crime in the middle of the afternoon on a busy college campus. I mean what was this student thinking? They must have been raised in the burbs and don’t realize that this is West Philly where we must live in constant fear of these assholes.
December 22nd, 2012 at 11:04 pm
Joey J, I think I like you.
I wish I didn’t have to keep lying to my family about how safe I am even as a 90-lb weakling all alone in this city. I live where some readers here complain about being yuppie-university-gentrified, and yet I’m surrounded on all sides by reports of muggings at gunpoint, excessively brutal purse-snatching, and people stealing phones right out of stroller-pushing mothers’ hands in daylight. I don’t even want to get thinking on exactly how a mail package containing my prescription from the pharmacy ended up missing in November. F*ckssake, people. I thought my having a $2 dumbphone would be more a point of pride and less a means of survival in bloody Thunderdome, PA.
When you feel like being unwittingly pick-pocketed in Thessaloniki was “getting off easy”, that’s a sad thing to find yourself thinking.