The 2024 Department of Public Safety’s Annual Security and Fire Safety report showed a 100% increase in vandalism crimes within Temple University Police Department patrol zone – 30 reported incidents in 2022, 63 reported 2023.
The report, released on Sept. 30, includes statistics, policies, and definitions of crime, fire and general safety guidelines on campus. The department is required to share information on campus crime through the Jeanne Clery Act. The Clery Act crimes include domestic violence, assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft. The department also includes non-Clery Act disclosures such as vandalism in their reports.
“The vandalism [incidents] can be anything from graffiti to a broken window,” said Vice President of Public Safety Jennifer Griffin. “What we have seen in those numbers are a lot of them are car vehicles.”
TUPD handles crime on and off-campus within its patrol zone, which covers from 9th to 18th Street and Susquehanna to Girard Avenue. About 18% of crimes in the 2024 report fall under the vandalism category.
A few of these vandalisms include vehicles that are not parked in university-owned parking garages, like the Liacouras and Montgomery garages. They also frequently occur on streets that include off-campus student housing.
Students have reported seeing post-it notes from TUPD on their vandalized vehicles. The note often includes a message from an officer, instructing the owner to contact the department to file a report with them if it is within the patrol zone.
“It depends on when we find them,” Griffin said. “Sometimes we find those in the middle of the night, so it’s like we’re not going to go knock on doors at three in the morning. [The officer] will leave a note to say, ‘Hey, we noticed this.’ We also don’t know if it’s new damage or old damage.”
Some students aren’t aware of the damage to their cars until after they are contacted by TUPD or the Philadelphia Police Department, including John Brownlee, a senior marketing major.
Brownlee found his window had been broken and his car crashed into a building in August 2023. Aside from additional surveillance from TUPD and the PPD station located on Montgomery Avenue, students, including Brownlee, want more accessible parking centers from the university.
“It was unfortunate because [the vandalism] was before parking was made available for the semester,” Brownlee said. “I just moved back two days before the semester Liacouras parking started, and they don’t necessarily advertise that you can pay to park early there before the semester.”
Sometimes students choose to not report a vandalism incident despite TUPD’s communication system. Lily Brunetto, a junior criminal justice major, also had her car broken into during the summer. She chose not to report it because she believed “TUPD wouldn’t do much about it.”
“[The perpetrators] took everything out of my compartments,” Brunetto said. “I guess they ate in there so there was food trash and silverware all over.”
Temple has two parking garages, Montgomery Garage and Liacouras Garage, alongside two metered lots. The university has multiple parking plans available, including a commuter and overnight option for students.
“I feel like the parking garages and parking lots we have here are so expensive,” Brunetto said. “I feel like cars are definitely safer there but I literally can’t afford it.”
The Liacouras Center parking garage currently charges a rate of $22 per day for its visitors. Overnight parking at all of its garages on campus are $426 per semester before any processing fees or taxes. Passes for the fall semester open up for purchase in July. There is no information listed about acquiring a pass early for the summer time.
“If you’re a student that lives here in the summer and you have to pay both semesters of parking, you end up having to pay over $1,000 for parking for the full year,” Brownlee said. “I think that is just a little ridiculous.”
TUPD does not have their own cameras in some off-campus parts of the patrol zone, but they have access to those that are owned by the city. In the event that a crime occurs in the few spots that have those cameras, they reach out to cooperate with the city.
“We have been seeing great success with utilizing the cameras and license plate readers,” Griffin said. “So we continue to try to leverage technology with some of these crimes.”
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