VSU Police Department has a method they encourage all students to take advantage of that will help handle the most common crime on campus, petty theft.

Administrative Sergeant-State Certification Manager, Heidi Browning, said petty theft is the most common crime on campus and consists of students stealing items such as laptops, phones, game systems or anything of similar value.

VSUPD has come up with a brochure design called “Personal Property Inventory” that allows students to document any valuable items to ensure the safety of their return upon them ever being stolen. The log asks for the brand name, model, serial number and MAC or IP address.

According to the brochure, “Maintaining an inventory of your personal property while residing on or off campus can assist the authorities with recovering your property if it is lost or stolen.”

Administrative Sergeant-State Certification Manager, Heidi Browning, said she has been distributing brochures to students at orientation. The brochure can also be found on the VSU website to help spread the word of their method.

“If I can get your MAC address, IP address, any of that information, they can get it to the investigators and the investigators can track it off the routers,” Browning said. “Also, if we have your serial number and all that information, we can put it in the national database, they can call us, and we can get a better recovery rate.”

With that information, it has made finding stolen items easier on the VSUPD because they could end up anywhere off of campus.

“We actually had a couple of weeks ago, a bicycle that was stolen from campus found in Missouri,” Rebecca Leatherberry, operations supervisor said.

Browning also encourages students to remember to lock up their belongings because people tend to look through car windows in parking decks and lots on campus.

“As far as crime prevention goes, it’s literally that simple,” Wilburn Leschber, operations major said. “If you keep your car locked and stuff out of view it makes it less enticing for somebody walking by.”

Leschber says he has seen people on camera attempt to steal items out of cars on VSU property.

“You can see them on camera,” Leschber said. “They go door to door, they pull on the door and wait for opportunity. That’s all it is, it’s an opportunity.”

More information on VSUPD’s methods of crime prevention can be find on the VSU website.

Written by Kayla Pool, News and Managing editor. Photo Courtesy of Kayla Pool.