Friday, March 29, 2024

Students patrol lots, keeping cars safe

October 11, 2000
Nick Eisenlohr, a criminal justice and psychology junior, left, and Tom Piotrowski, a criminal justice and psychology senior, are both student coordinators for Lot Watch. —

Vehicles properly parked overnight in an on-campus lot are still susceptible to break-ins, stolen property and damage to windshields, outside mirrors or doors.

What students may not know is that there is something they can do about it, thanks to the MSU police department’s secret weapon - the Lot Watch program.

The 10-year-old program, made up of 25 to 30 student volunteers, monitors campus parking lots during nighttime hours to catch criminals in action.

“We’re student volunteers who serve as the eyes and ears for the police department and work to combat the crimes that students most often face in the lots,” said criminal justice senior Nick Eisenlohr. “We make sure that things are covered when officer coverage in the lots is at a minimum, like during shift change.”

Volunteers are just expected to work one shift per month, approximately five hours, and pass a simple background test.

Eisenlohr has been involved with the program for three years.

During a typical five hour shift, volunteers are placed in undercover police cars equipped with radios in case they encounter any problems. Each volunteer is sent to a different lot on campus based on recent crime rates.

“We usually start by doing a run through the lot and check for already existing problems before settling in for the night,” Eisenlohr said. “It can be cold and it can be boring but you can never tell what may happen that night. Things can go from boring to exciting really quick.”

The program was founded in 1990 by several night-shift officers within the department, including Lt. John McCandless, who was still a patrol officer at that time.

“Back in 1990 we were being encouraged to start programs that benefited the community and increased the quality of living in the area. This sprung out of that,” he said. “It seems like we were checking on the lots all the time but no matter how hard we tried, the cars were still being broken into.”

The department handed out hundreds of fliers around campus and in the residence halls to launch the program, but only had 12 responses the first year. Most were criminal justice students or those who had their cars damaged.

“Not very much time went by before one of the volunteers saw a group of guys in one of the lots breaking into a bunch of cars,” McCandless said. “He called us and we ended up arresting six people.

“It has been very successful for all involved. Because of the group of students, we’ve made several arrests and recovered a lot of stolen property over the years.”

Eisenlohr, criminal justice senior Scott Goings and criminal justice junior Tom Piotrowski are the three student coordinators for the program. They work with MSU police officers Andrea Beasinger and Britt Riggs to organize and train volunteers for the program.

Beasinger was a Lot Watch volunteer for two years while attending MSU and said the program recruits heavily within the School of Criminal Justice, on the departments listserv and at American Criminal Justice Association meetings, but the program is not just available to students in that college.

The group’s next meeting is 7:30 p.m. on October 18 in the Department of Police and Public Safety Building.

“We want to get the word out that we are recruiting for the program right now,” Beasinger said. “We don’t want anyone who’s interested to think they can’t do it just because they’re not a CJ major. It’s open to anyone.”

Anyone interested in volunteering can show up and start training then, Eisenlohr said.

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