A meeting between three students and MSU Department of Police and Public Safety about the bike impoundment policy has left the issue unresolved and the students unsatisfied.
Anthropology graduate student Angela Jancius, her husband Daniel Sturm and genetics graduate student Paolo Struffi met with MSU police Deputy Chief Mike Rice on Thursday to discuss ways MSU police's bike impoundment tactics could be improved.
"He observed everything with a cost-benefit analysis," Jancius said about Rice. "He said that there will always be mistakes. That's really a shame."
Jancius, Sturm and Struffi came to MSU police in June with complaints about having unjust impoundments and damaged bikes and bike locks as a result of MSU police procedures.
Rice said he was trying to be conscious of the needs of students on campus, but bike impoundment is something that has to be done to keep the campus clean and will always draw a certain amount of dissatisfaction.
"In everything we do, we have to be sensitive to the needs of the people in the community," Rice said. "There are responsibilities that our department has that involves sometimes doing things that put us in conflict with our citizens. We have a responsibility to uphold the law."
Although no concrete decisions were made regarding impoundment, Rice did say he would be discussing the issue with his staff. The increased use of a red tag system that forewarns students about impoundment was a possible solution.
Rice said the red tag system was not used during summer sweeps because it would take a lot of time and money to tag each individual bike. Instead the department relied on posting notices around buildings and e-mailing the student body.
Rice said about 3,000 bikes were impounded last year with about 500 bikes being retrieved by the owners.
"That's still only four-fifths of bikes correctly impounded," Jancius said. "That is 500 people on their way to work or class."
MSU Surplus Store sales and marketing assistant James Ives said MSU police take special consideration for students after they do summer impoundment.
"The bikes sit (before coming to the Surplus Store) for at least 90 days and usually a lot longer than that," Ives said. "They are kept through the beginning of school to give people more of a chance (to retrieve their bikes)."
Rice says the department loses money each year on impoundment. The cost of student labor to impound bicycles outweighs the money the police makes from impoundment fees and the sales of impounded bikes.
Student labor and equipment costs have totaled more than $12,000 this year so far, Rice said. MSU Surplus Store marketing coordinator Kris Jolley said the store split the $17,000 it made from the sales of impounded bikes with MSU police. Coupled with $2,250 made from impoundment fees, MSU police have drawn in nearly $11,000 from bicycle impoundment this year.
The impoundment procedure is conducted by student employees under the guidance of MSU police and starts at the beginning of the summer covering the entire campus. Bike locks are removed with bolt cutters and stacked on a truck during transportation to the MSU Department of Police and Public Safety. After at least 90 days, the bikes are taken to the MSU Surplus Store where they are put on sale ranging from $1 to $200.
Ives said 90 to 95 percent of the bikes the Surplus Store receive have been completely abandoned with 30 to 35 percent total junk. He said without the efforts of MSU police the campus would look horrible.
The issue of bike impoundment will come before MSU Board of Trustees at its first meeting Sept. 12.
