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A recent rash of break-ins at lockers around NYU has become a cause for concern for Protection Services, as well as the students who rely on lockers to keep personal items safe.

Since the beginning of November, at least 13 lockers have been broken into and stolen from. The most incidents have taken place in the Coles Sports Center men's locker room, and at the Stern Management Education Center, with five and three break-ins respectively.

"We found no forcible entry with many of the lockers, so it is pretty much instances of opportunity," explained Jules Martin, assistant vice president for Protection Services. "Someone could go and try each locker to find which ones don't need forced entry to get into."

Protection Services has taken an active role in establishing an improved patrol of the floors where lockers are located because of this recent increase in larceny.

"We are increasing the roving patrols within the buildings and we are using other types of patrol to make sure we observe areas at more frequent times," Martin said .
In addition, Protection Services officers are checking lockers to make sure they are secured. Lockers that are not secured are then closed and locked by the officer, but not before a note is placed inside that states "Don't Be A Statistic."

"We have gone through the lockers to see which ones open just by being pulled and we have found a more than a few that open," Martin said, although he declined to disclose any of the statistics that Protection Services have compiled on the subject.

When asked about the idea of installing video cameras in the hallways, Martin said that the idea had been discussed, but he is confident that increased patrols would make a substantial difference in cracking down on locker thefts.

"We would like to go on an educational campaign explaining that people should turn their locker twice and [at Stern] they should pull the tab [on the locker] down once, and at Coles you should pull on the lock to make sure that it's secured. It is a very small investment to make sure that your locker is secure. [As far as video cameras go] locker areas should be treated with a high degree of privacy."

Students seemed to be against cameras as well.

"I think putting video cameras in hallways would be terrible," said Namrata Doshi, freshman in the College of Arts and Science. "People should live and not have to be watched, and under surveillance."

The two major recent locker thefts took place on November 14, when five lockers were reported broken into, though Coles management said that at least six reports were filed. The second major incident took place at Stern, where there were three reported incidents during the same time frame.

"We are going to take all measures to make sure that [large rashes of locker break-ins] don't happen again," Martin said. "We are monitoring it closely and we are making sure we are making a difference.""