Larcenies down, burglaries up on CMU campus

The number of on-campus burglaries has increased considerably over the past several years, but general larcenies have seen a nearly 50 percent drop.

Burglaries saw consistency through the majority of the decade, but spiked to 34 in 2008 from 13 in 2007. So far this year, there have been 26 reported burglaries, according to statistics provided by Central Michigan University Police Chief Bill Yeagley.

Larcenies at CMU also showed little change leading up to 2009. CMU Police investigated 193 such crimes in 2008 — fairly similar to other recent years.

However, there have been only 98 reported cases this year.

Based on his brief tenure with the CMU police, Yeagley said he can attribute the sudden decrease to programs organized by the university to prevent thefts.

“I think all of the recent prevention efforts have helped,” he said. “In past years, you could walk through the library and there would be laptops lying all over the place unattended.”

The higher number of breaking and enterings this year has mainly been because of a serial burglar, Yeagley said.

“It’s pretty uncommon to have a serial burglar but, fortunately, we were able to find him and arrest him,” he said.

County: increase in larcenies

The Isabella County Sheriff’s Department has witnessed the opposite. Larcenies have seen a significant increase to 463 during the 2008/09 fiscal year, which the agency now measures its statistics by, from 307 in 2007.

Meanwhile, burglaries have slightly decreased to 211 from 268 during that same time period.

“Larceny is up, and that may be a sign of the hard economic times,” said Sheriff Leo Mioduszewski.

Mioduszewski echoed Yeagley’s thoughts on spreading awareness about how to prevent breaking and enterings. The word needs to be better relayed to off-campus students, he said.

The department’s annual report was presented to the county Board of Commissioners last Tuesday, and also indicated a decrease in traffic stops to 4,678 over the past fiscal year from 8,896 in 2007.

Isabella County Commissioner John Haupt said the sheriff’s report was very helpful financially.

“We had a lot of questions about financial items, and he helped us answer those,” he said.

The Mount Pleasant Police Department has not seen major changes in larcenies and burglaries.

Burglaries went to 132 so far in 2009 from 156 in 2008. Larcenies decreased to 309 from 369.

Because the calendar year is not completely finished, those numbers do not show a very significant decrease, said MPPD Capt. Tom Forsberg

Staff Reporter Ed Schutter contributed to this report.