The 14 car break-ins and traffic incidents in the Reynolds Coliseum parking deck have increased concern over the safety of campus parking, but Campus Police and Transportation are working on increasing surveillance.
Capt. Jon Barnwell of Campus Police said the Coliseum Deck is actually safer now than it used to be. “About four years ago, [the Reynolds Coliseum Deck] suffered high levels of breaking and entering,” Barnwell said. “Since Transportation implemented the one-way traffic pattern, there have been a greatly reduced number of breaking and entering incidents.”
The Coliseum Deck, Barnwell said, is one of the safest parking areas on campus.
Cameras are primarily placed in areas where cars enter and leave the parking deck such as the paylot booths as well as near the “Wolfpack Exit Express” stations, according to Christine Klein, communications director for the Transportation Department.
The cameras are intended to provide protection at points in the deck where money is handled, Klein said.
A recent Wolf Web posting at brentroad.com claimed that Campus Police indicated to a student who had experienced a hit and run that a portion of the deck cameras either do not work or are fake and simply used to “scare people.”
But Barnwell refuted this claim.
“There are no fake cameras at N.C. State University,” Barnwell said. “The primary function of the cameras is to monitor cashiers, to troubleshoot if problems occur and to troubleshoot at the pre-pay machine more than they are a deterrent to breaking into motor vehicles.”
Barnwell said it is extremely difficult to determine who is responsible for an incident after the fact, and that all a camera can do is act as a deterrent. The images, he said, rarely result in a usable face image.
Maleena Cutts, a sophomore in mathematical education, said she still does worry about her car getting hit.
“One day [last year] I had a scratch on my car that wasn’t there that morning,” Cutts said. “I think that if there is an issue in the number of break-ins, then more cameras would make me feel safer, but if there aren’t a lot of break-ins, we don’t need them.”
According to Barnwell, a recent break-in occurred in which a laptop case was removed from the vehicle.
Barnwell said he suspected the theft occurred because it was assumed a laptop was in the vehicle.
He said the best thing any student can do is be proactive and not to let vehicles be a target regardless of where they are parked and not to leave valuable items in vehicles.
“The best thing [Campus Police] can do is educate the student populace on not leaving items in their vehicles,” Barnwell said.
Areas of campus currently experiencing the highest levels of break-ins include the parking areas around the baseball field, Dan Allen Deck and the Varsity storage lot, Barnwell said.
“Anyone parking in those areas — please don’t leave materials of value in your vehicle and report any suspicious activity,” he said. “The users need to be an extra set of eyes and ears to help Campus Police and Transportation. It needs to be a collective effort all the way around.”
Campus Police and Transportation are working to increase the natural surveillance in the Coliseum deck, according to Barnwell.
Natural surveillance is the ability to see the people and the vehicles in the deck from the street. The concrete walls of the Coliseum Deck greatly reduce the amount of natural surveillance, and recent construction proposals call for steel cables to provide an increase in natural surveillance, Barnwell said.
The deck has already undergone a conversion to higher grade lighting that adheres to nationally accepted safety standards and Campus Police and the Transportation enforcement officers patrol the parking areas frequently, Klein said.
