The Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) arrested a man at 4:34 yesterday afternoon for stealing license plates from a car in the Hill Hall parking lot.
The arrest came several days after at least seven other car break-ins occurred on or very near the Tufts campus between Feb. 24 and Feb. 27.
These break-ins followed the three that occurred between Feb. 18 and Feb. 21.
Because of the closeness in timing and location between the burglaries in the lots and the corresponding smashed windows, a link between them seems likely.
According to TUPD Lieutenant Domenic Pugliares, "It's hard to say," whether the arrest was related to these incidents.
The man, whose name has not been released, is not from the immediate area but has "a lengthy criminal record of motor vehicle-related offenses," Pugliares said.
A TUPD officer was in the area when he saw the perpetrator attempting to pilfer the plates. The man quickly walked away, but police apprehended him on Boston Avenue.
All the cars burglarized in the past two weeks belonged to students or staff members at Tufts. In addition, a car belonging to senior Sheena Harris was stolen, stripped, and recovered between the night of Mar. 1 and the morning of Mar. 2.
Each of the three robbed cars parked in the Hill Hall lot had a window smashed in sometime between Friday and Sunday.
The first reported crime, involving a Ford Explorer that had been parked in the lot since 1 p.m. on Feb. 24, was discovered at 4 p.m. the following day. Though the driver's side window was shattered, nothing was stolen.
But the owner of another robbed Ford Explorer reported a purse and a wallet missing. The perpetrator entered the vehicle by smashing a passenger-side window sometime between 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 25 and 10 a.m. Feb. 26.
A Volkswagon Jetta also had its windows smashed between 12:15 p.m. on Feb. 25 and 10 a.m. on Feb. 26.
Nothing was missing in this case. "They didn't think anything was missing, but it did look like [the perpetrator] looked around the car," TUPD Sergeant Robert McCarthy said.
Three additional break-ins of this sort were all reported on Feb. 27. These also took place near each other on campus, the first two in the Cousens Gymnasium parking lot and the third in the Eliot-Pearson parking lot.
Between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m., a toolbox was stolen from an unlocked car in Cousens Lot. The car's locks did not work, and approximately $40 in tools was missing.
Later on Monday, a car stereo was stolen between 2:30 and 8:25 p.m. from another car with nonfunctioning locks in Cousens Lot.
The third incident of the day occurred between 6:30 p.m. and 8:48 p.m. in Eliot-Pearson Lot. A duffel bag with a Canon digital camera, an iPod, a laptop computer and other items, including gloves and books, was taken from a 1999 Sedan.
At least one more break-in that was not reported to TUPD also took place over the weekend. Sociology professor Sarah Sobieraj woke up Sunday morning to find a "completely broken window" on the driver's side of her 2001 hybrid SUV.
Missing from her car, which was parked outside of her house behind Wren Hall, were an iPod FM transmitter, about eight CDs and change.
Sobieraj reported the crime to the Medford Police Department (MPD) rather than TUPD, but "It is relevant to the campus community because it's the closest house to campus," Sobieraj said.
Since the article that appeared in the Feb. 27 issue of the Daily ("Five break-ins in as many days"), TUPD has received several calls reporting suspicious people on campus. McCarthy also received an e-mail from someone who lives off-campus that reported a recent car break-in.
In the most severe burglary, Harris' car was stolen either on Mar. 1 or early on the morning of Mar. 2. Her 1999 Honda Civic was stolen from outside her house, 2 Capen Street East.
When Harris left her house the morning of Mar. 2, the car was nowhere to be found. Assuming it had been towed, she contacted both TUPD and MPD, neither of which had any record of a towing from her location.
When the police ran Harris' drivers' license number through the system yesterday, they found a match.
Her car was "picked up at 4 a.m. on the side of the road in Chelsea, completely stripped and still running," she said.
The car was found near a "chop shop," a location for impounding vehicles, in Chelsea, a town in Suffolk Country that is across the Mystic River from Boston.
The car was "completely stripped from top to bottom," according to Harris. While the radio was still in the car due to an anti-theft device, nearly everything else was gone, including the hood, the trunk cover, both front and back bumpers and all of the dashboard gauges.
"I think it might be totaled... the ignition and steering column were broken, too," said Harris, who was told that three to four cars are stripped in this manner each night in Chelsea.
"Apparently the '97, '98, '99 Civics are really prone to being stolen because those parts are hard to find [due to the fact that they are older]," Harris said.
Security concerns on campus have heightened in the wake of the reported break-ins.
"It is disappointing, because [the car] was parked in front of my house," Sobieraj said. "It makes me feel pretty uncomfortable. I'm locking my doors a lot more."
McCarthy indicated that TUPD is taking measures to combat the outbreak of these incidents. "We are working on it," he said.
There are "no leads at all, not even any suspects" for these crimes, Pugliares said. "We're getting hit hard; we've had a lot of extra people on-duty."
Kat Schmidt contributed reporting to this article.
