Boston University students targeted in 4 armed robberies

Parents Forum
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<p>BU students have been the target of 3 armed men, four times in the past two weeks. Three of the robberies occured just off campus (a block or two) on a route taken by students to their apartments. They occured at the same time of the day when students are walking to and from campus. Thank goodness there have been no physical injuries.</p>

<p>During this time there was an email to students warning them to be careful and that the various police agencies (campus, Boston and Brookline) were working together to put more officers in that area.</p>

<p>It wasn't until a fourth incident was ON CAMPUS that the school took action. The next day there was a $10.000 reward, a town hall type meeting for the students and an email to parents. </p>

<p>In one article written by administrators was this statement.
“However, Tuesday’s robbery took place on our campus. This brings the problem home, and it dramatically elevates our concern for the safety of our community. While the police are doing an excellent job, it became clear to us that it was time for the institution to enhance its support of the investigation.”</p>

<p>Should the school have taken more (quicker) action when it was clear that BU students were being targeted. Are they "lesser" students because they live 500 feet from campus?</p>

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<p>Targeting students is a growing MO for criminals all across the country.Most have valuable EZ to sell stuff on them. Easy marks too.</p>

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<p>It’s hard to say when there are property issues. The local police are responsible for the public streets and sidewalks unless BU Security are considered police officers and have the ability to arrest and investigate. I don’t know if they operate like that. If there are problems, then there are steps that the school can take including providing rides and escorts to the off-campus apartments that a lot of BU students reside in. BU, of course, can’t provide that for all of the apartments that students stay at.</p>

<p>Another thing that schools can do is provide better lighting and security cameras but it would have to secure permission to do this off of its property, either from owners of apartments or the city. Son’s school actually did all of these things when the number of robberies on a particular bridge went way up. The city was unresponsive in improving security so the school added lighting and call boxes on the bridge along with surveillance. They always had shuttle busses but they increased advertising on the option to students. The measures that they took greatly reduced robberies on the bridge. They, of course, had to work with the city to get permission to make changes to the bridge.</p>

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<p>One of the robbers turned Himself into the police and is under arrest. THey are looking for the other two robbers. The person that turned himself in is a juvenile.</p>

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<p>15 year old from the dot turned himself in earlier today. gotta love all the BU parents freaking out about this. sure its not good this was going on, but these people were acting as if there had never been a single robbery in the city of boston before this.</p>

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<p>I have lived in Boston and other cities before but have never
experienced an in-person robbery firsthand, much less an armed robbery
with a handgun. I imagine that the majority of people haven’t experienced
an armed robbery.</p>

<p>My wife and kids had firearms training last week (rifle, handgun, assault
weapon) and it’s there that you realize that you can kill someone with
these things. They are not really that hard to operate with the proper
training and they can certainly result in a greater understanding of
life with some reflection.</p>

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<p>I had a look at the Boston Police Department statistics from Friday to
Tuesday and there were 17 street robberies. Some of these may have been
armed as this probably includes snatch-and-run robberies. That projects
out to 1,768 street robberies per year in Boston.</p>

<p>The estimated population of Boston in 2011 was 625,087 according to
the US Census so your odds of getting robbed on the street in Boston
is 1/353 or not that likely. If you live and work or go to school
in the safer area, I’d guess that the odds are far lower.</p>

<p>My son lives in Boston and I don’t worry about his safety as he’s in a
safe area. Most parents probably assume that BU is a safe area because
it is so busy. Parents worrying about their kids is normal - you invest
a ton of time, energy and money on them and you don’t want to lose them.</p>

<p>We hear tragic cases of college students losing their lives and it’s
hard to imagine the amount of suffering that parents go through in losing
a son or daughter. This sort of thing has happened at Boston College too.</p>

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<p>many people think of boston as a college “city” with high tech and medical companies in it. make no mistake it is a rough run down dangerous place with, colleges in it and not the other way around.</p>

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<p>My daughter is a student at Boston University. One of the issues seems to be one of jurisdiction, with three police departments involved, Brookline, Boston and Boston University, which from my understanding is just like a regular police dept. I am glad that the university finally put up a reward, seems to have worked and I don’t doubt the other two perps will be in custody soon. </p>

<p>As for this post,</p>

<p>“many people think of boston as a college “city” with high tech and medical companies in it. make no mistake it is a rough run down dangerous place with, colleges in it and not the other way around.”</p>

<p>I think it is ridiculous. Boston is most certainly an urban environment, with all that entails, but to describe it as “a rough run down dangerous place” is just silly! </p>

<p>By the way, my daughter is an athlete and walks to the boathouse during the early morning hours and has never felt in danger, despite coming from a very suburban environment.</p>

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<p>Parts of Boston are dangerous. Some parts are very safe too. The city needs to keep students safe - Boston gets a lot of revenue from students and they can’t afford the students and parents getting spooked. I consider the area around Boston University safe. Northeastern University used to be in an unsafe area, at least on one side. I think that it’s a much safer place today.</p>

<p>Check out the West End - very, very safe place in Boston. I suspect that there are a lot of wealthy and professional people living there and Boston needs those people.</p>

<p>I’ve been to several of the dangerous places. Some places were dangerous to go to in the past if you were white and some places were dangerous to go to if your were black.</p>

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<p>I absolutely agree there are parts of Boston that fit the description, but to try to paint the whole of Boston as “a rough run down dangerous place” is ridiculous to me.</p>

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<p>First of all, I would venture to say the figure of robberies per year is at least 2 to 3 times the number listed, as the majority of these go unreported. As for Boston being safe/dangerous, I agree and disagree with the poster above. Boston is certainly not run down for the most part (although in some places it might be considered run down- think bromley heath, side streets off BHA in the pan etc), but it also isn’t this perfectly safe college town the national media makes it out to be either. Crime happens all over Boston, even in the nice parts. Back Bay, probably one of the nicer overall neighborhoods in the entire country, has its fair share of street crime. The already up and coming south end borders Roxbury and also has major gang affiliations within it, including in places like cathedral, tent city, villa victoria etc. One gang even started out and is mainly based out of the south end even (mass ave hornets). However, like in any city in the country, if you are proactive and aware of your surroundings, you should be fine, but stuff does happen. I’ve lived near BU my whole life and these kids make themselves easy targets. They have their head down looking at their $200 dollar phone while walking down streets, along with those noise-cancelling headphones. I have even seen people hanging out in front of their apartments on side streets using their laptops. You might say you should be able to do that stuff, but you are not in Westchester ny or some random suburb anymore, and stuff does unfortunately happen. Admittedly, I don’t watch the news as much as I probably should, so I had actually not heard of this happening till the 4th robbery (although I bet this happened more than 4 times and some went unreported). When someone told me there was a 10,000 reward for this, I was shocked and could not believe it. I looked it up and sure enough there it was, national headlines and all. I apologize if this offends anyone, but it was practically comedic to me that this made national headlines. The other couple thousand robberies in this city are LUCKY if they get a short blurb written up about them on a local Boston site like universalhub if at all, much less national headlines. The real scary part here is nobody seems concerned about the guy who showed up in the Charles with chains and a cinder block around his ankles. Now that is seriously seriously messed up and scary. If the Bo Po rules that an accidental drowning or suicide, then you have something to be angry with them over. Hopefully they resolve that situation soon because that was just terrible what happened to him.</p>

<p>Sorry for the long post with no paragraph breaks :)</p>

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<p>The area around BU includes Cottage Farm, which is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the US. The area where the robberies occurred is in a smallish triangle that runs along the Turnpike - which is below ground. It is quite safe, but it has relatively easy access to Fenway and thus to neighborhoods in the rest of Boston. </p>

<p>For context, the average home price in Brookline exceeds $1M and the average condo price is over $500 per square foot. The area next door to the part of BU in question is Back Bay. Condo prices there are also over $500 psf. New and renovated units, like literally around the corner from where the robberies occurred, sell for over $600 psf. Not a bad neighborhood. </p>

<p>The only major school in Boston near a bad neighborhood is Northeastern, which borders Roxbury and is next to a housing project. But I wouldn’t call NEU unsafe, even if you live in the dorms next to Roxbury. </p>

<p>I live about a mile from these robberies. The area is very safe, particularly for the bad kind of crime, meaning crimes against the body not of theft. </p>

<p>The arrest explains the 4 news trucks pulled up outside the district courthouse when I walked home from the gym. The glamorous life of TV news: sit in a van for hours, run cables, connect the generators, check the lights, drink coffee, find a bathroom - which in this case was handy in the library - and all for a few seconds of airtime. </p>

<p>Do not underestimate the attention this crime spree received from the police. </p>

<p>One of the interesting things about living in a safe area is that crime is news. The usual refrain is “it can happen anywhere”. Of course it can; what makes an area safe or not is how often it happens. What makes the robberies near BU stand out is things like that don’t happen. </p>

<p>To be blunt, far more terrifying is the occasional lunatic who assaults women. Because it doesn’t happen often, women are used to walking the streets alone at night. Rarity of crime reduces inhibitions and leads people to be less cautious. Every 2 or 3 years, some guy - last time it was 2 guys in a van - try to assault women at night. They tried to pull 2 different women into their van. They were caught. That’s scary. (This is not around BU but in the heart of Brookline, which is so safe I send my kids extracts from the weekly police reports as humor. As in, police called to investigate a strange odor on Gardner Road, no odor detected. We did have a bear in a tree this summer.)</p>

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An armed robbery is just a trigger-pull away from from a murder. The BU parents are not concerned with have their kids’ laptops stolen.</p>

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<p>Students make great targets.
They are often distracted, they are out at all hours, they carry electronics, & they may be more than distracted by friends or by their iPhones, they may be under the influence.
[Victims</a> struck over the head in 3 separate armed robberies, police say - KCPQ](<a href=“http://www.q13fox.com/news/kcpq-victims-struck-over-the-head-in-3-separate-armed-robberies-police-say-20120929,0,5845418.story]Victims”>http://www.q13fox.com/news/kcpq-victims-struck-over-the-head-in-3-separate-armed-robberies-police-say-20120929,0,5845418.story)</p>

<p><a href=“http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/10/10/two-uic-students-robbed-at-gunpoint-near-campus/[/url]”>http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/10/10/two-uic-students-robbed-at-gunpoint-near-campus/&lt;/a&gt;
Non urban areas are not any safer. Rural & suburban areas have problems too. The meth labs and grow operations tend to be out in the sticks.</p>

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<p>I absolutely agree there are parts of Boston that fit the description, but to try to paint the whole of Boston as “a rough run down dangerous place” is ridiculous to me.</p>

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<p>“An armed robbery is just a trigger-pull away from from a murder. The BU parents are not concerned with have their kids’ laptops stolen.”</p>

<p>OK, as is the case with every armed robbery, but the fact is nobody was injured in these or even slightly roughed up. You don’t have robberies where no injuries occurred making national news let alone reward money being thrown around here except for this. That’s why I was so shocked.</p>

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<p>The figure cited is for all robberies. I imagine that fewer than 1/3rd are armed. More like
purse or smartphone snatching, pickpockets, etc. Stuff that isn’t as dangerous as armed
robbery. But lets say the figure is two to three times what the BPD reported. You odds of
getting robbed at gunpoint is still small.</p>

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<p>Could you provide a link to an article where the national media says that Boston is a perfectly
safe college town?</p>

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<p>We’re talking about armed robbery here. Yes, there are all kinds of crime, but parents don’t
worry about the shoplifting problem relative to their kids in college. BTW, isn’t Beacon Hill
nicer than Back Bay? We looked for an apartment in Beacon Hill earlier this year but I didn’t
like the seclusion of the parts parallel and behind the main roads.</p>

<p>I used to live in Winter Hill. As in the Winter Hill Gang. Their activity (scores of murders)
was slightly before I moved there but I did get my car broken into there. But I never had to
deal with armed robbery issues.</p>

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<p>There are kids from many different backgrounds at Boston University. NH has a lot of
small towns where you really don’t need to lock your doors and the transition to the big
city from a small town can be disruptive to your habits. This is something that parents or
the school should educate students on.</p>

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<p>Why should this be a surprise? Parents are spending $240,000 to send their kids to BU
and you have thousands of them. $10,000 in that context is small change.</p>

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<p>Parents of students probably have money available for consumption. Doing an article
about college students and their safety gets the attention of the media. The media makes
their money selling advertising. Why wouldn’t you run this story?</p>

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<p>This story is certainly in the news however there aren’t a lot of details about it and there’s
nothing that we can do for this student now. It is likely that this wasn’t a random thing as
was the BU story.</p>

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<p>I think that parents are surprised at your insensitivity to how parents feel about their kids.
Maybe it takes being a parent to understand this. Though I know many students that wouldn’t
be so insensitive.</p>

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<p>This is not the case with every armed robbery. Your behavior against a knife or bat or no weapon at all may be quite different than against a gun. With a gun, an accident could kill you immediately. Much less likely against a knife or bat. Running may be a very good option, especially if you’re one of the many fit, BU students against certain kinds of armed or unarmed robberies.</p>

<p>Have you ever had a loaded gun pointed at you?</p>

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<p>If you are bent on robbing young fit people, you have to not only be able to over power them, you have to know how to use a knife or a bat or your fists to kill them. A gun will do that for you.</p>

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<p>Northeastern safety had been a concern to us, but they really have their act together with campus police - [Public</a> Safety Division](<a href=“Home - Northeastern University's Police Department”>Home - Northeastern University's Police Department). At Orientation I think they mentioned a staff of 60+ officers. Also there is a public police station near the International Village dorms. </p>

<p>In areas off campus students should use street-smarts, travel in groups at night. We felt the same way after visiting Case in Cleveland - urban campuses have pros/cons. For students that love the vibe of a big city, the pros far outweigh the cons.</p>