Burglaries In Oxford Not Epidemic, Not Uncommon Either

By Paige Zagranski

Miami University journalism student

The off-campus houses of Miami University students serve as a hunting ground for burglars. The thieves have it down to a science.

When class is in session, they will drive around and “scope out parties,” according to Sergeant Jon Varley of the Oxford Police Department. They come back later in the night when they know the students have left for the Uptown bar scene; or, they return days or weeks later when they assume students are gone for break.

Last year, burglaries were reported at 73 Oxford homes according to Oxford police, and even more went unreported, students say.

As recently as 2014, two separate crews were active in Oxford, driving burglary rates up for that year, Varley says. One group was made up of three younger adults in their late teens and early twenties and the other group was composed of four men in their mid-twenties.

All of the members of the two groups were unemployed Caucasian males with criminal backgrounds. One group was from Hamilton and the other was from Oxford, he says.

Detectives tracked the groups down with the help of pawnshops reporting stolen items that were then identified by Oxford residents. Many of the items were returned to their owners, police say.

Nevertheless, Varley believes many burglaries go unreported because the victim feels the stolen item is not worth all the trouble of reporting the crime.

Jon Francis, a Miami senior, had a bag of clothes and a television stolen from his Collins Street home this past October. Francis and his housemates did not report the incident because they assumed the items, “were long gone and there was no way a cop was going to find them.”

Pawnshops in the region receive a weekly list of descriptions and serial numbers of items reported stolen and are obligated by law to report stolen items they receive to police. Students often don’t know the serial numbers of their stolen items, making them harder to recover.

Varley acknowledges that burglaries are one of the more talked about crimes among the student body. It is a crime the OPD is concerned about, but not at an “epidemic level or anything of that sort,” Varley says.

Photo: An Oxford police cruiser sits outside the police station on Saturday afternoon. -- Photo by Kelly Wagner