 "Photo: Ilissa Gilmore / The South End")
The communication graduate office in room 508 of Alex Manoogian Hall is a workstation for about 20 adjunct professors and graduate teaching assistants. On the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 23, it became a crime scene with an infinite number of suspects.
Graduate T.A. Tarana Hammond said she left the office that day at 9:35 a.m. to teach her public speaking class and returned soon after 11 a.m. to prepare for a colleague’s baby shower at 2 p.m.
She said she left the office in shorter bursts to help setup on the fourth floor, while leaving her purse and laptop under her desk before going.
She didn’t notice her items were missing until Steven Slocum, another graduate T.A., asked her if she still had them.
Slocum discovered his laptop missing after he came back from his class to work on a paper that was due that day. He said he looked at Hammond’s desk, which is adjacent to his, and noticed hers was taken, too.
“I thought he was a pulling a joke on me,” Hammond said. “Then, I went to my desk.”
Along with her laptop, her purse and the personal items inside it, such as her medication, retainer, credit cards, iPod, health insurance card, and social security card, were gone.
This incident is another in a series of recent thefts that have occurred in this area of Manoogian. Purses, course materials, and candy dishes have been taken out of faculty offices on separate occasions. A dog cage outside an office also went missing.
Lt. Henry Villerot of the Wayne State Police Department said police can assume these incidents may be related because it’s the same building, but there is no evidence to suggest that they are. Everything’s being investigated both as connected and separate incidents.
Hammond said the crime didn’t “make sense” because the office is non-accessible to the public. It was designed to be a “safe room” in the event of a gun attack. Its two doors lock upon closing and are heavy enough to close automatically; a key is needed for entry. Since the incident, the locks have been changed.
“This is unacceptable,” Hammond said. “This is supposed to be a secure office for the people who work here.”
Villerot said the investigation concerning the theft has yielded “nothing so far,” though police suspect the thief could have entered through the door that connects the room to the adjacent computer lab classroom, which was found unlocked.
Due to the lack of surveillance by cameras or patrols, police may never get a clear idea of what happened. There are cadets who randomly patrol the campus and its buildings, but Villerot said it’s not possible to have someone everywhere at all times.
“If you’re looking for a constant presence in a building, it’s not going to happen,” he said. “We don’t have enough personnel.”
Now in the office, co-workers exercise increased caution and paranoia, asking before leaving if others are staying in or not. And the incident hasn’t done much for office morale; Hammond and Slocum believe the theft was an inside job.
“You think everyone’s above board, but you never know,” Hammond said. “If it was a random theft, how would [they] know my stuff was under my desk?”
Villerot said that anyone could be a suspect because anything is possible when buildings, like Manoogian, are open to the public. He said the lack of challenging strangers, particularly the homeless, who enter a building, allows for an “opportunity theft” or larceny, and it’s very common on campus.
There have been 130 accounts of larceny from January to July of this year, according to WSU’s Campus Watch. Lt. David Scott said the university used to average 600 larcenies each year.
“If we give them the opportunity or make if easy for them, they’re going to take it,” Villerot said. “You would not believe what people are carrying in backpacks.”
Hammond said her office’s circumstances were different.
“It’s not like I left it randomly in a classroom,” she said. “We weren’t mindless; we thought this was a secure room.”
Even though the items were taken from the office, William Kemp, assistant director of Risk Management, said Hammond and Slocum would have to replace their items at their expense, because in this case, the university is not at fault.
Hammond, who is still in the process of canceling her credit cards, said the incident has been an “inconvenience beyond measure.”
“You don’t even think about how expensive the stuff is until you have to replace it,” she said.
Slocum said the loss of data is worth more than the money he’ll spend to replace it.
Amanda Reid contributed to this story.
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