Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta is dealing with a new kind of crime wave this semester — the snatching and grabbing of student cellphones. There have been 14 incidents since August.
“It’s because of the proliferation of everybody using these smartphones,” said Connie Sampson, GSU’s chief of police. “We call it robbery by sudden snatch. Most of them have been in the daytime, and most have been with our students walking down the streets utilizing those smartphones and somebody walking up real quickly and snatching those phones and running.”
To date, none has involved a weapon, Sampson said. Two or three of the crimes have involved stolen wallets.
In some cases, the perpetrators pull up in a car when they see a student talking on a phone. “For some reason the student allows them to borrow their phone and they drive off,” Sampson said.
Another issue for GSU is persons with criminal histories loitering inside university buildings and residence halls.
“They come in with so-called friends,” Sampson said. “But if they have no legitimate faculty, staff or student business certainly in our housing complex, then we issue a criminal trespass warning. They are not allowed to be on campus.
“Other than the cellphone snatching, it [crime on campus] appears to be about the same, or maybe less than last year,” Sampson said.
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