In the past several days, as students have returned to Bloomington from winter break, the Bloomington Police Department has received several reports of burglaries and break-ins in neighborhoods near campus.
Police reports typically don’t say whether a complainant was made by a student or not, but in these cases, residents left and returned to their homes on dates coinciding with the three-week holiday, BPD Capt. Steve Kellams said.
BPD responded to a call at about 3 p.m. Thursday from the 300 block of East Sixth Street. The caller told police he’d been out of town since Dec. 17 with his roommates and when he returned on Thursday, he found his back door was difficult to unlock, Kellams said.
When the resident got inside the house, he found it in disarray. Televisions and other electronics were missing. At the time of the report, the complainant’s roommates had not returned home, so he wasn’t sure if anything else had been taken.
He told police he was sure everything, including bedrooms doors with individual locks, had been locked. Kellams said the difficultly the resident had opening the back door may be a sign of forced entry.
Officers responded to a 10:47 p.m. call Friday from the 1100 block of North Indiana Avenue. The residents had returned to town Wednesday and found nothing amiss, police said. On Friday the residents found their basement door had been broken into. Small televisions and video game consoles were missing.
Several residents in student-populated neighborhoods reported burglaries or break-ins Saturday.
A resident of the 400 block of North Grant Street reported he had left town Dec. 17 and returned home Saturday to find someone had entered his home through a side door, Bloomington Police Sgt. Pam Gladish said. Money was missing from the house, and the side door had pry marks on it.
Nearby, on the 200 block of North Grant Street, a resident told police he had left Dec. 16 and returned Saturday with his roommate, Gladish said. They noticed nothing out of the ordinary until they reached the kitchen, where they noticed the cabinets were open. Upon further inspection, the complainant found a Marshall speaker had been stolen from his bedroom. His roommate’s room was missing a safe, which had contained nothing except IU basketball tickets. An officer walking through the house noticed several drawers that had been opened and rummaged through.
The break-in did not appear to be forced entry, though the residents told police they were sure all doors had been locked, Gladish said.
A resident of the 400 block of East 12th Street returned Saturday after leaving Dec. 17 to find his house’s front room in disarray, Gladish said. Drawers had been thrown open, and a back door had been forced and left open. The only thing the resident noticed missing was a portable speaker, though his roommate had not returned yet.
A break-in reported on the 100 block of East 15th Street concerned out-of-place objects rather than missing ones. Residents renting the house left Dec. 16 and returned Friday, Gladish said.
One resident noticed the house’s detached garage, which is used by the homeowner and is not accessible by the renters, had some windows covered by cardboard that had not been there before.
The renter contacted the owner, who entered the garage and found several random objects. Late Friday night a man knocked on the door, told the resident he’d been kicked out of his house and been keeping some personal belongings in the detached garage and asked if he could continue to do so, the resident said. The resident asked the homeowner, who declined but gave the man time to remove his belongings.
Police do not believe the man had been sleeping in the garage, Gladish said.
