By Nick Mendez
Crime Log entries are selected from Northeastern’s Division of Public Safety reports.
Crime Log Entry of the Week Saturday, April 7 2:30 a.m. Officers were investigating a car collision on the corner of Huntington Avenue and Gainsborough Street when a 19-year-old male student approached them. The student was visibly intoxicated and demanded to know what was going on. He walked into the middle of Huntington Avenue and an officer told the student to get out of the street before a car hit him. The student began swearing profusely, exclaiming that he was a citizen of Boston and had the right to know what was going on. He also claimed to be from The News and said he wanted a quote for a story. Still in the middle of Huntington Avenue, he continued to scream obscenities at the officers. An officer warned him to stop or he would be arrested. The student’s friends grabbed him and dragged him away. Before he left, he lifted a bag of trash out of a wastebasket and threw it in the street. NUPD identified the student and he will be reported to OSCCR.
Monday, April 2 10 a.m. A staff member parked in the Columbus parking garage returned to his car and found the university parking decal missing from his window. The door had been left unlocked.
2:30 p.m. A resident assistant (RA) on the first floor of Rubenstein Hall smelled marijuana. Northeastern University Police (NUPD) responded and spoke to the 19-year-old female resident of the room, who admitted she had been smoking. She had two male visitors, an 18-year-old student and a 20-year-old non-student. The 20-year-old visitor admitted to bringing the marijuana, and turned over two small bags. The non-student visitor is no longer welcome on campus. The resident will be referred to the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution (OSCCR). The 20-year-old will be summonsed to Roxbury District Court for possession of marijuana.
3:30 p.m. University bookstore staff reported a woman in the store who had been a prior shoplifter. The staff believed she orchestrated an elaborate textbook scam on several occasions. When NUPD responded, the suspect had already fled the scene. Officers received a description and stopped the woman on Huntington Avenue. She was with two men who have no university affiliation. Officers identified Michelle Griffin, 31, of Quincy, who was wanted on a shoplifting charge there. She was taken to NUPD headquarters, where she was questioned and admitted to the details of the scam. She said she would steal textbooks she knew were particularly expensive and approach students in the Curry Student Center with the books. She would tell students her roommate had moved out and left the books behind, and ask if they could sell the books back to the store for her because she didn’t have her Husky Card. She said she sometimes folded the edges of pages and underlined passages to make the books look used, and paid students $20 for their help. Griffin ran this scam at other universities as well, and NUPD warned local university bookstores. NUPD believes Griffin was a full-time thief supporting a drug habit.
7:30 p.m. A 19-year-old female student reported receiving increasingly offensive and harassing phone calls from a man she had met socially over the weekend. NUPD contacted the man and told him to stop calling her.
9:30 p.m. An officer in Smith Hall observed fresh holes in the sheetrock wall on the first floor.
Tuesday, April 3 12 p.m. A 22-year-old male student reported that at 2:45 a.m. March 31, he and a non-student female friend were robbed of about $21 on The Fenway behind the Museum of Fine Arts. They were accosted by a group of young men, one of whom assaulted the student while another robbed his friend. The male student suffered a broken cheekbone.
8 p.m. A 19-year-old male student reported his laptop and two MP3 players were stolen from his apartment at 650 Columbus Ave. He was away from his apartment between 10:30 a.m. and 8 p.m., and believes he and his roommates both locked the doors behind them. NUPD has security camera footage of a suspect walking into the apartment without a key, possibly having taped the lock open. The investigation is ongoing.
Thursday, April 5 6 p.m. An 18-year-old female student reported leaving her iPod either in a classroom in Ryder Hall or in Levine Marketplace between breakfast and dinner.
8 p.m. A staff member reported a side window of his car was broken while he was parked in the Columbus parking garage. Nothing was missing from the car.
10 p.m. An RA smelled marijuana coming from an apartment at 110 St. Stephen St. Officers spoke with the 20-year-old female resident and her two 20-year-old male guests, one a student and one a non-student. NUPD found the remnants of marijuana cigarettes, marijuana hidden under a couch cushion and a pipe. When officers asked who owned the pipe, a guest responded, “There are some things I don’t think we should tell you and that’s one of them.” The resident then said she owned the pipe. The students will be reported to OSCCR.
Friday, April 6 6 p.m. The manager of the West Village Wollaston’s reported a group of pre-teens shoplifting in the store. They ran off when he approached them and got away with some candy.
3:30 a.m. NUPD responded to a report of a fight on Forsyth Street near Huntington Avenue. They encountered a female non-student with a laceration on her face. The Boston Police Department (BPD) had an ambulance take her to a hospital. Bystanders indicated the fight started as people were leaving a party on Hemenway Street, and a student might have been involved. NUPD has the student’s name but they have not yet located him. The investigation is ongoing.
Sunday, April 8 12 p.m. A caller reported a fight on St. Stephen Street near Gainsborough Street. The caller described three people fighting, one with a knife. NUPD and BPD responded and spoke with two 18-year-old non-students who reported that a man in his 20s had tried to rob them with a knife. They told police they did not give up their belongings and scared him off by lunging at him suddenly. The suspect had a young teenage female with him, who the victims believe lives a few doors down from the scene. NUPD is investigating.
5 p.m. A 21-year-old woman visiting a student for the weekend reported leaving her cell phone in the West Village H laundry room Saturday night. When she returned for it the next day it was gone.
