Nearly $1.5 million in personal property is stolen from the campus area each year and until recently, there were few ways to identify recovered items, said University Police Chief Ron Michalec.
However, the situation might be different now. The police is working with off-campus student services, Student Affairs and the Columbus Division of Police to promote a new identification system that could improve students’ chances of retrieving their stolen property.
The ultraviolet identification system is a way for students to make a mark on their personal property without defacing the items.
“It’s kind of like a serial number. What makes the UV more effective is that thieves might not know the UV is on the item,” said Lt. Michael Broberg of Columbus police.
“There are so many times when we come across a piece of property that can’t be traced back to the owner,” Broberg said. “We end up having to let the thief keep it because we can’t prove that the thief does not own it.”
The invisible UV ink is used to mark portable items such as laptop computers, cell phones, cameras and other valuable items belonging to students. Police will then use an ultraviolet reader, similar to a black light, to read the markings on recovered property.
Although students are able to choose any combination of numbers, social security numbers should not be used, Michalec said .
Driver’s license numbers are often recommended because it is easy for police to run the numbers through a national database, thus increasing the possibility of recovering stolen property, he said.
Students who participate in the program are given a sheet of paper to record all their identified property, along with the model and serial number of each item.
“Whenever you recover items, it obviously lowers the numbers (in amount of property loss),” Michalec said. “(The program) forces people to jot down the make and serial number of all items that are dear to them.”
If the items are stolen, the victims have a better chance of getting it back, he said.
“We can’t enter stolen property without that information – the bonus is having the UV invisible lighting,” Michalec said.
The actual success rate of the ID marking system has not yet been determined because this is the first quarter the markers have been made available to students.
John Kleberg, the director of risk assessment for Student Affairs, said the marking system is still in the experimental stage and they are evaluating it as a crime prevention program.
“We want to get a sense from the students if this is a good idea and if they want to participate in it,” he said. “So far, the reaction has been pretty positive.”
Marketing for the program will be more aggressive in the fall, Kleberg said.
One additional benefit of the program is the low cost of the markers and the readers.
“The whole thing is just a few hundred dollars,” Kleberg said. “It’s fairly inexpensive for what I think is a pretty good program – one laptop would cover the cost of the entire program.”
Even though there are no plans to expand the program citywide, the Columbus police continues to cooperate with the university.
There are 12 readers in the Columbus burglary and pawnshop squads. Each pawnshop detective is provided with a reader that will be used to routinely check the 42 pawnshops throughout Columbus.
“It’s better than doing nothing,” Broberg said. “If we keep doing what we have always done, we’ll get what we have always got. We’ve got to try new things to make an impact.”
