Overall, October saw a significant decrease in crime.
Compared to 102 crimes in October 2010, this October saw only 67 crimes total, including crimes against persons and property.
There were nine crimes against persons last October compared to 10 in October 2010.
Of those, five were simple assault as compared to last year’s two. However, two of five were committed against police officers and one against a Penn Medicine employee this year, Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush said.
Crimes against property decreased 37 percent, from 92 last year to 58.
Of two burglaries last month, Penn Police have made progress in investigations, making one arrest.
In one case, Penn Police investigated a report that an unauthorized male was cutting 10- to 12-foot pieces of copper piping from a building, Division of Public Safety spokeswoman Stef Karp wrote in an email. After an investigation, a suspect was arrested for the crime.
In the other burglary case, two laptops were taken from an unlocked room, according to Karp. One of the stolen laptops was recovered through Computrace, a software which tracks the location of computers. A search warrant has been served and Penn Police continue to investigate.
INTERACTIVE: October crime 2007-2011
Penn Police have made three arrests of suspects for bike theft and has arrest warrants for three other suspects, Rush said. Last month saw 15 bike thefts compared to October 2010’s 12.
Rush was pleased that this October saw an 87-percent increase in the use of walking escorts compared to last October. Last month, 1,900 members of the Penn community requested an AlliedBarton security guard as a walking escort.
Thefts from buildings decreased from last October’s 47 to only 20 this October. Rush believes this decrease is in part due to DPS’ campaign against unattended theft of personal belongings in public areas such as libraries on campus.
The decrease in crime this month is the result of the “totality of the number of years we have been educating the community and they have been bracing that education,” Rush said.
The headline of this story has been updated to reflect that crime did not drop 67 percent from last October.
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