There have been three reported cases of prowlers in East Lansing neighborhoods in the past three weeks, police said.
A 20-year-old Tecumseh man was arrested for prowling and disorderly conduct when caught opening the screen to a basement window at a house on Michigan Avenue at 5:30 a.m. April 2, East Lansing police Lt. Kevin Daley said. The man has a criminal history involving assault.
He had a casual knowledge of one of the women living in the house, but all tenants reported that he should not have been trying to get into their house.
"As the weather gets nicer, these reports start rolling in more and more," Daley said.
Police take these cases very seriously, Daley said, adding that people should call the police if there's a suspicious person or problem.
"You'd have to wonder, how much further would they go to get gratification," he said of the prowlers. "We'd rather respond to 100 false calls than have someone sit there and think, 'Gee, I didn't think it was important,' and then have something happen."
Six days after the first incident, a 26-year-old East Lansing man was arrested for disorderly conduct and supplying false information to a police officer, Daley said. Security personnel at an apartment complex on Chandler Road called police at about 3 a.m. to investigate a suspicious subject. The man was wearing all black clothes and had a pair of women's underwear and a wad of tissues in his pocket. He said he had dropped off some women and was looking for someone else who lived there. The person the man said he was looking for did not live there. The man gave a fake name for himself and was issued a trespassing letter.
On Monday, residents of a sorority house on Burcham Drive reported a man exposed himself through a window at the house at 10 p.m. The man had fled the scene before officers could find him, Daley said.
Even if the person has left the scene, witnesses should call the police, East Lansing police Chief Tom Wibert said.
"The problem isn't over because they'll go somewhere else," he said.
Kathleen Miller, president of MSU's Sexual Assault Crisis Intervention, said the focus should be on holding perpetrators responsible and not on if survivors of the incidents should alter their behavior.
"As students on this campus, as individuals, as women, we have to live our lives," Miller said. "So if I'm walking and someone exposes themselves to me, there's not really anything that's in my power to prevent something like that."
