Parking permits stolen from three vehicles parked on campus

Three Cal State Long Beach students had their vehicles burglarized while parked on campus last week, and coincidently each case involved stolen parking passes.

“We find it very interesting that each of these cases included the loss of the parking permit,” said Stan Skipworth, chief of the University Police Department.

Skipworth said the department didn’t know if the same criminal was involved in all three break-ins.

In Parking Structure 1, a CSULB student arrived at his vehicle on Sept. 26 to find its doors and trunk open. His parking permit, CD player and Bluetooth device were reported missing.

The student told police he had locked his doors before leaving his vehicle.

That same day, in Parking Lot 14, a student found that her vehicle wouldn’t open when using her remote, which only happens when the vehicle is locked from the inside.

She reported her parking permit and radio console as missing.

In each of these cases, police checked for fingerprints and evidence as to how the vehicle was broken into, but nothing was found.

As of Jan. 29, police did not yet know whether the university’s camera system had caught the perpetrators on camera, since the reports on the case had been prepared immediately after the crimes were reported, Skipworth said. Checking the camera system for evidence remains an option for University Police, although there are no cameras installed inside of Parking Structure 1, where two of the break-ins occurred.

The parking permit of another student was stolen from her car while it was parked in Parking Structure 1.

“I don’t understand why somebody would take a parking permit because it has a barcode and is serialized,” Skipworth said.

Each parking permit has a barcode that can be scanned by Parking and Transportation Services employees in order to determine which car each particular permit was registered under. Anybody caught displaying a stolen permit will faces a $250 fine, said Mark Rudometkin, interim general manager of Parking and Transportation Services.

When notified of a stolen parking permit, the Parking department puts the permit into their “hot list” database, Rudometkin said.

Parking officers, who scan as many permits as possible during patrols, will immobilize a vehicle displaying a stolen permit until the owner surrenders it back, Rudometkin said.

Students who report their permits as stolen may receive a new one for free from the parking department, Rudometkin said. This can be done by bringing in a police report of the crime to the parking department offices, which can then reissue a new permit that day.