Three University students lost bicycles to theft on Friday in an unusual burst of crime, Public Safety officials said yesterday.
"Our safe atmosphere here kind of lulls us into innocence, and we leave our bike unlocked and unsecure, and then it's gone," Public Safety Crime Prevention Specialist Barry Weiser said. "But it's unusual that we had three bike thefts."
No suspects have been identified in any of the incidents, but Weiser said he did not believe they were related.
Despite the wave of thefts on Friday, Weiser said fewer bikes have been stolen so far this year than last year. Between Sept. 1 and Oct. 20 of this year, Public Safety received 42 reports of stolen bikes, compared to 54 in the same period last year.
The first theft on Friday was reported just before 2 p.m. outside McCosh Hall. The student had locked the bike to itself, but did not use a bike rack or other anchor.
"A lot of people do that," Weiser said. "The bike gets picked up and carried away. We caught one guy last year riding a bike with another bike on his shoulder."
In the second incident, a student reported a bike stolen from Witherspoon Hall at around the same time. It had not been locked.
Finally, at 11:34 Friday night, a student reported that his bike had been stolen from a Witherspoon St. parking lot while he ordered takeout at Ichiban restaurant. The bike, worth $200, had been left unlocked and in plain sight.
Because the crime occurred off-campus, the case was referred to Borough police.
Weiser said bicycle theft remains a problem for the University campus.
"We average about 130 bike thefts every year," he said. "It is the number one crime here at Princeton. We recover a small amount, but most remain on campus with people who ride them around again and again, and some are taken off campus."
Most bikes reported stolen were not locked at the time of the crime, Weiser said.
"It's always the first thing we ask, and nine times out of 10, the answer is no," he said.
Weiser encouraged students and others to purchase bike locks from Public Safety. Even so, he said, "sometimes a professional with a hydraulic jack or saw will take off with the bike, even if it is locked."
Weiser also recommended that members of the University community register their bikes with Public Safety.
"That puts it in this giant database that's available forever for us to recover your bike and then identify whose it is," he said.
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