Professor assists police, urges community to speak up

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Situated in Virginia’s capital city with a combined student, faculty and staff population of nearly 51,000, Virginia Commonwealth University presents a unique challenge for the VCU Police. As music professor John Patykula found out, community involvement can help the police immensely.

Since 1979, Patykula has been a resident of West Franklin Street, which runs through VCU’s Monroe Park Campus. On the morning of Oct. 11, he was feeding the cat behind his apartment when he noticed suspicious activity taking place in the abandoned building down the alley. When Patykula went out again the morning of Oct. 14, he was able to flag down a VCU police officer.

“He told me they were looking for someone at that very moment, so he parked his car and went into the walkway,” Patykula said. “Within a few minutes he came out with a man and several more VCU police cruisers showed up.”

Inside the building, VCU Police found more men in an empty second-floor apartment. The incident led to a series of charges against the men including trespassing, possession of illegal drugs and a concealed weapon charge. The officers were grateful to have assistance from the community. Patykula said students shouldn’t be afraid to speak up and to report suspicious activity to the VCU Police.

"Community involvement is critical to our mission of making VCU the safest campus it can possibly be,” said VCU Police Assistant Chief Chris Preuss. “Our 92 officers will be much more effective if we have the eyes and ears of all 50,000 members of the VCU community keeping an eye on their corner of campus.

“We can only solve the problems we know about, so we encourage folks to stop an officer, call, email, text or use the LiveSafe app to report anyone or anything suspicious.”

 

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