Locker room thefts

New social distancing proceeders are put into place for the locker room. This includes staggered and shorten changing times for each sport, along with tapped areas to change in.

Dea Divi

New social distancing proceeders are put into place for the locker room. This includes staggered and shorten changing times for each sport, along with tapped areas to change in.

An ongoing issue of students having their items stolen on campus has been a progressing problem that has been taking place in the locker rooms. Whether it’s the dance locker rooms, P.E locker rooms or basketball locker rooms, items that are out in the open have a risk of getting stolen.

“Typically they’ll either tell their teacher or AP here or they come straight to me and then I’ll give them a form which is going to be a theft of lost item form and they’ll describe what happened, what was stolen, where it was stolen, how much of the value, the serial number, any suspects, just the details of the theft and then I’ll take that information and follow up with the cameras,” school resource officer Glen Hubbard said. “If it’s a phone or something of high value, I will put that item in NCIC/TCIC which if it’s sold or pawned or something like that, then I will be notified and usually end up with that item back.”

Lock up your stuff. Keep track of it.

— school resource officer Glen Hubbard

Although the process of notifying someone that an item has been stolen is a tedious process, the case is followed up one way or another with the large amount of work put into solving it and getting answers.

“I follow up on the leads, check the cameras,” Hubbard said. “Follow up with any witnesses, suspects, things like that. If it’s been pawned or sold, I check with those. Stores or agencies that may have recovered it because sometimes, other agencies have found an item that somebody has called or something and then I can recover it from that agency and then that entails finding out how those people got that item and following up with them. If I do recover it, then I return that item back to the owner and then ask them if they want to pursue the charges or not resume them.”

While students, administrators, and staff are unaware of who is stealing student’s belongings, the main location of where this is all taking place is known to many.

“The most this year is the locker rooms,” Hubbard said. “A lot of lockers are left unlock and people just leave their phone out somewhere and it disappears and the other places have been at lunch time. They just get up and leave it and then someone takes it.”

Although the recovery of stolen items is a long and overwhelming process, it is very possible to catch the thief.

“Absolutely it’s possible,” Hubbard said. “If there’s good evidence, if there’s good video of witnesses then we talk to people and find the property and stuff like that then sure. We can definitely find them.”

Although there is a possibility to recovering stolen items, preventing belongings from being stolen is a less tedious process.

“One thing we can do to help prevent theft from the locker rooms is to keep the locker rooms locked,” coach U’ilani Womble said. “And the other thing that needs to happen is everybody needs to put their stuff in their lockers and keep their lockers locked and not give their combinations out to friends or anybody else.”

While prevention of getting items stolen is always good, the cameras in the hall are still a good source of protection.

“We tell our kids to lock up their stuff in their lockers, but in regards to recovering their stuff, we don’t have cameras in the locker rooms of course, so we rely on the cameras in the hallway to see who’s going in and out of the lockers,” Womble said. “We have them report with their SRO and give a valid report and tell them what they’re missing and as far as the same thing with recovery, sometimes we get lucky and things turn up and sometimes they don’t.”

Sometimes we get lucky and things turn up and sometimes they don’t.

— coach U'ilani Womble

While locking up your stuff is very important, keeping track of it is just as important in regards to not leaving something you didn’t intend to leave somewhere.

“Lock up your stuff,” Hubbard said. “Keep track of it. Don’t just let it sit around because you get distracted in your conversations and things like that and someone just comes and picks it up. Keep your bags in your lockers during gym or something like that. Make sure everything’s locked up and if you really don’t want to take it, then don’t even bring it because we know it’s impossible for phones. It’s just like a part of your body. Just keep track of it.”