6A
Wednesday, June 28, 1995
CAMPUS/AREA UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Campus police find less summertime crime
Reporter sees few violations in ride-along
By Angie Dasbach
Kansan staff writer
It's Friday at 9 p.m. and all is quiet on the dark, KU campus until the KU police department is notified of three perpetrators invading a house on West Campus Road.
I am riding shotgun with Officer Handel Welsh, who puts the car in gear and heads for the house.
We pull up in the driveway and spot the perpetrators immediately. Eventually, we corner the criminals, and I anticipate the reading of Miranda Rights.
But my excitement soon turns to amusement because the three perpetrators found terrorizing the neighborhood are ducks.
"This is pretty exciting stuff." Welsh said, jokingly. "The campus is usually pretty calm during the summer."
Despite the fact that campus settles down in the summer, I was hoping for a car chase or a big arrest during the short stint as a KU police ride-along.
Unfortunately, Welsh told me that summer violations weren't as exhilarating as a high-speed car chase.
The usual problems that the KU police encounter, Welsh said, were from KU summer camps.
He said that the young visitors sometimes dialed 911 or played with the emergency phones as a prank.
"The activity on campus may be slower during the summer, but the camps with the junior high kids keeps us busy." Welsh said.
The most disturbing incidents involve drunk drivers, he said.
After we chased the ducks down to Potter Lake, we drove around campus until an unsuspecting civilian was caught speeding: 41 mph in a 30 mph zone.
We were heading west on 15th Street, but Welsh whipped the car around to the east, and we were approaching the speeding car at 50 mph. As the offender pulled the car to the curb and stopped, visions of a rear-end collision danced through my head. We didn't slowed down.
Just as I checked to see if my seat belt was intact, we stopped five feet from the car. Thank God for anti-
After my short-drive with Welsh, there was a shift change and I was placed with Officer Robert Linzer.
lock brakes.
We parked at the west end of 19th Street, and began the shift.
I watched Linzer shoot radar and then decided it was time for me to do some traffic regulating. He handed me the radar gun. It felt
handles the good to be the one aiming the gun and not the one getting a speeding ticket
speeding ticket.
Linzer said that he didn't pull a car over for speeding unless the driver was going 10 mph over the limit. That made my job difficult because every car that passed by the radar was only five to eight mph over the limit.
lights; had given two sobriety tests; and had caught two people driving with suspended licenses.
"It's been a normal Friday night as far as the summer goes," Linzer said. "I like to get OUT, but this may not be the night for that."
Since my luck wasn't that great with the KU police, I decided to spend Saturday night with the Lawrence Police Department.
I didn't catch anyone trying out for the Daytona 500 on 19th Street, but by 2:30 a.m., Linzer had pulled three people over for speeding; had stopped two cars for broken tail
The night began by helping Officer Glen Hazelwood direct traffic on North Third Street. The street was flooded from the underpass to Tanger Outlet Mall, and it was our job to prevent people from barreling through the lake that covered the road. Our civic duty was completed
at 10:45 p.m., and Hazelwood drove to his favorite doughnut hole, Village Inn, 821 Iowa St.
As we shared a club sandwich,
Hazelwood said that the Lawrence
police remained busy during the summer even though there were less students.
"We look forward to the quiet that comes after graduation," he said. "But for past few years it has been just as busy during the summer as it is during the fall or spring."
There is an obvious increase in outdoor activity, Hazelwood said, usually involving noise complaints, bar brawls and car burglars.
When we finished our lunch break, police dispatch alerted us to a possible intruder in the basement of a northwest Lawrence home. We headed west on Sixth Street driving 65 mph.
We arrived first on the dark street.
Hazelwood shut off the headlights and instructed me to stay in the car. Two other police officers soon followed.
As I sat alone in the car, I waited for a dark figure to come flying out at me from the back of the house and take me hostage.
But the only person who came out of the house was Hazelwood, and he said that the house was safe. I was disappointed, but secure.
Around midnight, we went to the police station to pick up Hazelwood's partner, Officer Jim Phillips. Phillips and Officer Jim Phillips.
Phillips said that after midnight
we would get busy.
He wasn't living.
First, we helped track down a person who put a fist through the front window of Rick's Bike Shop, 916 Massachusetts St. After that, we investigated a bar brawl at the Jet Lag Lounge, 610 Florida St. Then we drove through northwest Lawrence looking for a full-size car whose driver was allegedly shooting a rifle randomly.
We never found the gun-slinging driver, but we continued to tour looking for troublemakers.
Phillips said that the Lawrence police tried to prevent crime from happening but the department lacked personnel.
He said that proactive policing helped resolve problems before they occurred.
"We are more reactive these days because there's not enough of us," Phillips said. "We go from call to call, and we don't have as much time to patrol the streets."
I couldn't imagine what it would be like to stay awake all night fighting crime, but when my shift ended at 5 a.m., I knew that I would stick with reporting.
I was exhausted from clutching the police car dashboard.
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