In the past three years community college campuses in Southern California have, across the board, have seen increases in motor vehicle thefts on campuses.  

This information comes from an annual report, compiled by the individual police departments, that among other things, tallies the amount of motor vehicle thefts, burglaries and assaults.

While car thefts on the Cerritos College campus have nearly doubled in the past year, from 16 to 28 incidents, Cerritos College Police Chief, Richard Bukowiecki has a larger scope on the problem.

“If you look at our statistics from 10 years ago we were sitting at about 40 a year, consistently, so we are still below what we were before we got the towers,” Bukowiecki said.

Nursing major, Dianna Garcia said, “I think Cerritos College has a large campus and it is hard to cover all the parking lots, but I am shocked that the theft rate is so high.”

While the department saw a significant decrease in car thefts when the towers were inplimented to the parking lots on campus, the towers have since been up and down according to Bukowiecki.

“They are about 10 years old and have basically outlived their lifespan, were looking into purchasing a new one and it is a priority with dealing with the increase in parking lot crime,” he said.

“Every time I pass by the towers there is never anyone in them. We pay for secure parking, we might as well park off campus,” said computer science major Louis Meza.

While more cars are stolen from Cerritos College than almost any other surrounding college, Bukowiecki said, ” A large quantity of vehicles stolen from campus are recovered from local areas and they usually aren’t stripped or damaged.”

In an attempt to battle the problem campus police with the help of Cerritos College President Linda Lacy, are making changes in the campus police department. “They are going to revamp the towers, going to add more emergency phones and adding a sargeant,” Lacy said.

Along with the revamped towers campus police are also trying to find traffic control officers and according to Bukowiecki the amount of traffic control officers, especially during the night shift is low and are currently accepting applications.

While Bukowieki believes revamped towers and more traffic control officers would improve the situation, Emily Otero a pharmacy technician major thinks the added resources wouldn’t do much to help.

“Instead of worrying about giving out so many tickets they should worry about security in the parking lots,” Otero said.