Arson and public intoxication weren’t the only violations taking place in the Ghetto on Homecoming Saturday.
When student residents of a house on Collingwood Street arrived home from the party on Aberdeen Street Sept. 24, they discovered they had been robbed.
“I was watching the car get flipped as my house was getting trashed,” said resident James Ridout, ArtSci ’08.
On that evening, Kingston Police said two break and enters were reported. Last year, one break and enter was reported on Homecoming Saturday, Oct. 23.
Ridout said the robbery at his house occurred sometime between 8 p.m. and midnight.
Ridout said he’s certain the thieves entered through a back window.
“I called 911, and [the operator] said this was not an emergency and hung up,” said Ridout’s housemate Sarah Kerd, ArtSci ’08. “[The cops] were not very helpful.” She added that her friend had gotten the phone number for the police station from a police officer on Aberdeen.
Another housemate, Andrew Dobbin, Sci ’08, said he had talked to some police officers on the street that night after he had been robbed.
“[The cop] said … they’ll send somebody out in the morning,” he said. “He was pretty sympathetic, so they weren’t all bad.”
Police Insp. Brian Cookman told the Journal last week about 115 officers were patrolling Aberdeen Street that night. None of the force’s 179 officers were allowed to take time off that weekend.
Among the items taken from the Collingwood Street home were computers, CDs, DVDs, money, cologne, perfume and a Playstation, the residents said.
They estimated the total value of property stolen to be about $10,000.
“They ransacked me. I have nothing cool left in my room,” Dobbin said.
The residents said they don’t have much hope of getting their stolen property back.
“The police pretty much told us they’re not going to find our stuff—at all,” Kerd said.
Grace Martin, ArtSci ’07, said she was also a victim of theft the night of Sept. 24.
“I was on a field trip for biology, overnight, [at] the Queen’s University Biology Station,” she said. “I live on William, and I guess [the crowd] was pouring onto William more than last year.” Martin added that because her housemates had friends over, there were a lot of people going in and out of the house.
“I live on the third floor, and [someone] took my laptop and nobody knew,” she said.
Martin said she called the police when she discovered her laptop was missing.
“They came within an hour after I called them. I got a report from them, they were really nice about it,” she said. “They were kind of optimistic, even though I kind of knew they couldn’t do anything about it.” So far, however, Martin said she hasn’t heard back from the police.
“It was frustrating [because] I wasn’t even here partying,” she added.
She said her housemates thought they knew everyone in the house, but said now it seems this wasn’t the case.
A total of 504 break and enters were recorded in Kingston for the 2004 calendar year.
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