Author: Drew Jaffe
Students at Occidental College have increasingly become targets of criminal activity, despite crime reports from the LAPD suggesting the opposite. While some incidents have allegedly been limited to verbal harassment, other students have found themselves facing potentially life-threatening situations.
Although there was an apparent uptick in crime in early 2013, a recent Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) report shows that violent crime was down 20 percent in July compared to July 2012, while property crime was down 4.5 percent.
Several students have spoke up in regards to crimes committed against them. A student who chose to remain anonymous due to the personal nature of the crime receives threatening and debasing statements around three times per week.
“I’ve lived off campus for two years prior to this year and never had a problem and this year it’s been happening to me extremely often,” the anonymous student said in an email. This harassment occurs during the student’s one-block walks to and from the student’s off-campus house.
The student’s experience is not uncommon. Biology major Christina Turner (senior) recalled an experience in mid-June in which her roommate was harassed and threatened on their property.
Her roommate had returned home late one evening and lived in the back house; not wanting to disturb her roommates in the main house, she walked through the adjacent alley to get to the side gate. It was here that she passed by two men loitering in the alley.
“These two guys were cat-calling her, and she didn’t respond because she didn’t think they were talking to her,” Turner said.
Turner’s roommate continued through the side gate to her backyard only to be followed by the two men standing nearby. Once in the back house, Turner’s roommate heard the two men banging on her door while shouting various threats. Turner’s roommate called the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), but the men left before officers arrived.
The men then approached two women waiting in a car in the alley. They harassed the women for a few minutes before stabbing one woman’s approaching boyfriend. The women called the police who apprehended their attackers within a few days.
But that was not the end of Turner’s and her roommate’s encounters with threatening strangers. Later that summer, a friend of one of Turner’s housemates found a man trespassing in the backyard, but he promptly fled.
Property related crime has the highest incidence rate in Eagle Rock, accounting for about 80 percent of all crimes, according to an LAPD report. And while the report notes a decrease in crimes from each category of misdemeanor, Turner says that neighbors have noticed an increase in crime.
Director of Campus Security Holly Nieto urges students to use common sense and utilize the safe rider program if they do not feel safe walking around Occidental by themselves.
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