The solution to crime problems like these recent knifepoint robberies is simple. Every year its the same story: cops all over the place patrolling North Campus at all hours of the day and night, handing out parking tickets with extreme prejudice and keeping an eye on all those potential shoplifters at the bookstore, while meanwhile this kind of crap goes on every year at South Campus and the Heights. Every year they lurk around the Amherst Campus, ready to swoop down on your car like a SWAT team if one wheel is over the line, while students down in the Heights are afraid to wait for the bus after dark or walk down the street to the store or, apparently, even just sit in their homes with the door unlocked. What the university needs is to get these glorified meter maids off of North Campus and out patrolling the Heights, where students are in real danger every night. It's a criminal misuse of manpower to bloat North Campus with all of these parking lot Kojaks when 19-year-old kids living in the Heights aren't even safe in their own homes. I'm sure if things like this started happening to John Simpson's neighbors he'd have the National Guard pitching camp in his backyard within a week. Why can't kids in the Heights expect a little bit of the protection that they're paying for?
Not that anyone should expect that to ever happen. It's been clear for a long time that UB would prefer if the Main Street campus and surrounding area would just fall off the face of the earth. Still, it's nice to fantasize that maybe one day all the police who have the parking lots of North Campus on lockdown might actually get out to where they're needed and do some actual policing.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
