At the entire university, there are warnings about theft. But where do most things get stolen?
All around the university’s walls, signs have been put up with the stereotypical image of a thief, with an eye mask, and the text Pay attention – the continuous reminder that you should be aware of theft.
But how much theft does actually take place at the university? To get an impression, Lundagård has requested the statistics about the total amount of reported thefts around the university areas.
AF-borgen stands out
A place that stands out significantly among the theft reports is AF-borgen. Until now, 41 out of a total of 139 reported thefts at all considered areas in 2014 have taken place there. Pickpocketing and theft without burglary are the most usual reported crimes.
A reason for AF-borgen’s many police reports could be that there is a lot of people around and that activities of many different associations and assemblies are taking place there, not rarely around-the-clock.
Despite the long rows of bikes parked in front of AF-borgen, the amount of bike thefts does not stand out in the statistics: so far only four bikes have been reported as stolen in this area during 2014.
Unreported cases could be numerous
Not surprisingly, the amount of theft reports lowers during the summer months, when there are fewer activities at the university areas. Most reports are filed in May and during fall.
The amount of reported thefts has been stably low during the three years that were investigated, but with a slightly increasing trend every year. In 2012, 126 cases of theft were reported, in 2013 the number was 147 and until November 15th of this year, 131 thefts have been reported to the police. This slight increase might depend on the fact that people have become better at reporting thefts.
The item that is most often reported as stolen is a bike and until now, 33 reports of stolen bikes have been filed this year. At the same time, the police estimate that around 60 to 70 bikes get stolen in the entire city of Lund every week. The amount of unreported cases of bike theft is high, and the same could be the case for other types of theft, depending on the value of the item that gets stolen.
