Crime remains level during Halloween as number of parties increases

Halloween, Halloweekend, Mischief Night, no matter how you phrase it, the weeks surrounding Oct. 31, bring a connotation of elevated crime to police officers.

However, Deputy Director of Campus Safety Services Charlie Leone, said that on Main Campus not much is to fear in terms of mischief.

“This year has been really good,” Leone said. “What we would see on mischief night is eggs being thrown, groups of kids walking around will throw eggs, sometimes at students, sometimes at me. In terms of Halloween, usually we see the same type of things except this time people are in costume.”

“The other piece of it is that there’s a lot of parties that go on. So you know, we’ll see assaults, we’ll see intoxication, things like that,” he added.

As far as a trend on campus with parties at this time of the year, Leone said there is a definite uptick, a belief held by many students as well.

“Everybody just wants to dress up and go out and have fun,” freshman biology major Jessica Pukavage said.

Junior therapeutic recreation major Nelly Mac agrees, said there are parties “everywhere you walk.”

Leone said that Hurricane Sandy’s impact on the Northeast in the days approaching Halloween, caused Main Campus to be particularly quiet on nights that usually play host to mischief.

“There was definitely less going on on Monday and Tuesday, I would think Tuesday evening we probably would have had more activity outside.” he said  “No mischief, no craziness that you might expect, you know people getting a little stir crazy but the students did a great job for us.”

ThroughoutSandyand the Halloween craze, Leone said CSS remained on the job.

Leone described that during this time of year safety services “beefs up” by adding an abundance of extra patrol, overtime and officers coming in on other shifts.

In regards to serious Halloween crime,Temple has seemed to have avoided the trend as expressed by Leone, who described Halloween crime on campus as “nothing horrendous.”

Cindy Stansbury can be reached at cindy.stansbury@temple.edu.