Thefts Reported at Urbandale High School

A rash of electronic devices stolen at Urbandale High School have been reported to Urbandale police in the past two weeks.

Since Sept. 6, four students and one adult reported thefts to police at the high school and one student reported a theft at the middle school. Taken were cell phones, graphing calculators, iPods and an iTouch, according to police reports on the Urbandale Police Department's website.

A 53-year-old woman reported her iPod stolen at a weekend volleyball tournament at the high school.

"It might appear that we're having a higher number of reported thefts than we have in the past," said Urbandale High School Resource Officer Curt Vajgrt.

However, he said that may be because he has been working to persuade more students to file police reports. Students may ask him to investigate or ask school administrators to investigate without filing a police report.

Many students don't want to file a police report and Vajgrts said the number of reported thefts is a small fraction of the thefts that occur.
"I would be very, very fortunate to recover one in every 10 iPods that are stolen," he said.

Vajgrt said he can't necessarily say there have been more thefts in the past two weeks, although he notes there is "a lot of thievery going on here." Still, he doesn't believe it's more than any other metro school.

Thefts most commonly occur from gym lockers, locker rooms or band or music rooms because students can't secure their belongings.

Even though he give students a 10-minute talk at the beginning of the school year, warning them not to leave valuables in P.E. lockers, it still happens, he said.

He said that what's new is that students are reporting having iPods stolen out of their backpacks while they are in class. "They call it 'jacking my stuff'," he said.

Because they often don't notice the missing device until later in the day, he said, it's very difficult to solve those cases or recover the stolen item.