Burglaries at their height during winter break

Sophomore Jenny Hempen answered a panicky phone call from her roommate around 1 a.m. on Sunday,… Sophomore Jenny Hempen answered a panicky phone call from her roommate around 1 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 27 — only to find out that over Thanksgiving break, her Oakland apartment had been burglarized.

“I definitely didn’t think this would happen, especially to us. It’s a running joke in our apartment about how safe we thought our apartment was,” said Hempen, an urban studies major. “We have security bars on all our windows and locks on all the doors. We never thought this would happen.”

Unfortunately for students living in Oakland, stories like Hempen’s are all too common. According to the Campus Crime Report from the Pitt Police, there were 46 burglaries on campus and in the surrounding Oakland area in 2010 — nearly triple the amount in 2009, when 16 burglaries were reported to the University police and University officials. The crime at Hempen’s apartment was the only reported burglary in Oakland during Thanksgiving break.

Hempen lives with two roommates in a house that is split into three apartments on North Bellefield Avenue. One of her roommates worked late Saturday night, and she returned home to the girls’ apartment early Sunday morning to find closet doors open, liquor bottles laying all around their hallway and the girls’ bedrooms completely ransacked.

“All of our rooms were totally trashed. It looked like a tornado had gone through there,” Hempen said. The roommate immediately called the police after notifying Hempen and her other roommates about the situation.

“She was very upset. It was actually very dramatic,” Hempen said. “The police had to go around the corners [of the apartment] with a gun to make sure the guy wasn’t still there.”

With the increased number of burglaries over the past two years, Pitt police stress the importance of securing apartment doors and windows before students leave for winter break.

“Our advice to students is to secure all their valuables before leaving. They should make sure all windows and doors are secured, not only during the holidays, but at all times,” Officer Ron Bennett of the Pitt police said. “We also encourage them to report any suspicious activity to our department at 412-624-2121 or, if they’re not on University property, 911 for the City of Pittsburgh P.D.”

Bennett said that the Pitt police have a continuous working partnership with the city police to ensure the safety of students and the Oakland community.

Hempen said the police believe the intruder worked the security bars off the front windows, pushed the window air conditioner through with a hammer and crawled through the hole in the safety bars to break in through the front window of the apartment.

Hempen’s Thanksgiving break ended abruptly when she had to return to Oakland with her mother the next day to be present while investigators dusted for fingerprints throughout the apartment. When she arrived, she found that laptops, cash, jewelry, her camera and other easily removable electronics had been stolen.

“The finger-printing wasn’t very productive, and we didn’t really expect it to be. There’s an investigation pending now, but we’ll see,” Hempen said. “We’re just trying to get over it now. Everyone in the three apartments [in our building] has bought security systems [since the burglary]. We just bought ours two days ago.”

Junior Dominique Hess was the victim of a burglary last December, when intruders broke into her apartment on Neville Street.

“It was scary. I cried. It was just scary to think that someone came in like that and came in through the bedroom window,” Hess said. Luckily for Hess and her roommate, the intruder broke in while they were both out.

Hess, who studies dental hygiene, lost her laptop inthe burglary.

“I would suggest checking all the windows before you move in anywhere. My dad went out [after the break-in] and bought deadbolts for my windows to make sure that they were secure,” Hess said.

After the incident, Hess installed an alarm system that hooked on the back door of the apartment in the hope that it would scare away potential intruders.

Although students will be clearing their minds of papers, projects and final exams as soon as they leave Pitt’s campus for winter break, the Pitt police will continue to patrol throughout the Oakland area 24/7, Bennett said.