Georgia Tech, GSU, Atlanta University Center students learn steps to curb threat of crime
By Bill Torpy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, May 17, 2009
It was after 11 p.m. as Georgia Tech sophomore Mohammed Washim and a friend finished a school project and left the library.
Construction work closed a main walkway, so the two took the detour. A hooded man with a handgun appeared from behind. “You’re being robbed,” he said. He ordered them to place their bookbags and wallets on the ground and walk away.
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Jason Getz/jgetz@ajc.com
Georgia State senior Abegail Fearon of Loganville talks to a fellow student as the GSU Crime Suppression Team is shown in the background in front of the general classroom building on Peachtree Center Avenue.How we got this story
This story was developed through interviews with students, crime victims and police and safety officials at metro campuses, by checking statistics provided by the schools to the U.S. Department of Education and through reports about recent crime incidents on the campuses and off.
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• Atlanta and Fulton County news It was a good haul for five minutes’ work, according to the police reports: two laptops, two calculators, an iPod, a cellphone, a stack of credit cards.
“He seemed like an experienced robber to us,” Washim, a native of Cambridge, Mass., recalled. “He was very efficient. This wasn’t his first time.”
The March 30 incident was one of five times that Georgia Tech students were robbed at gunpoint in a two-week period. The crimes — it is not known how many were connected — were unusual in their frequency but not in occurrence. After all, institutions like Georgia Tech, Georgia State University and the Atlanta University Center are all near high-crime areas.
That fact came alive again this month when a Georgia Tech student was shot during a carjacking and a Georgia State student was shot during a kidnapping, probably by the same three criminals. Both men survived. While the events did not occur on campus and were not school-related, they indicate students in urban settings are often targeted by criminals.
“College students make for ready victims,” said Volkan Topalli, a Georgia State criminologist and an expert on street crime and carjacking. “Look at where Georgia State is situated, and Georgia Tech. Same with Morehouse [and other colleges in the complex like Clark Atlanta and Spelman]. There’s a population of offenders in those neighborhoods nearby who are looking for people to victimize. If you have city campuses, you have an available, consistent pool of victims.”
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Until someone comes up with a plan to address and change the Domestic Pirates who are preying on those other young people that are seeking to develop themselves - this will remain as a problem.
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