Kelly Fang/Senior Staff

An electrical wire theft, which UC Berkeley officials believe may be linked to the on-campus explosion, is part of a larger trend of copper thefts on campus and in the city.

Although UCPD is conducting an ongoing investigation of Monday’s theft of high-voltage copper wiring from a campus electrical facility, multiple instances of copper theft — from construction materials, decorative plaques and even toilet flushers — have occurred on campus.

The copper wiring was taken from a facility near the Big C trail, according to a UCPD Daily Activity Bulletin. The incident, however, highlights a prevalence of copper theft at UC Berkeley that, while sporadic, is costly to the campus.

Police are actively investigating the theft but do not have any suspects at this time, UCPD spokesperson Lt. Eric Tejada said.

“We have some leads in the case — there was evidence left behind,” Tejada said. “We are hoping to get some fingerprint or DNA evidence off of it.”

Tejada said that copper theft is something UCPD deals with on a regular basis on campus and that thieves commonly cash in the metal at recycling centers.

On Jan. 20, 2011, a grand theft of 500 pounds of copper wiring from Memorial Stadium while it was still under construction cost the campus $2,000, according to UCPD crime logs.

These thefts are not always crimes of opportunity but are often highly planned, Berkeley Police Department records show.

On Aug. 22, a theft of 30 feet of copper coaxial communication cable from a utility pole in northwest Berkeley interrupted telephone and cable television service to numerous homes in the surrounding area, according to a police alert on the city of Berkeley’s website.

Similar incidents occurred in a nearby city, where witnesses reported seeing a boom-equipped utility truck and workers who were wearing hard hats and orange safety vests and appeared to be doing “legitimate work,” according to the alert.

Thefts of copper increase as the price per pound increases, so because the current price of copper is on the rise, the city and its citizens must be even more vigilant, said BPD spokesperson Officer Jennifer Coats in an email.

As of Thursday evening, the price of high-grade copper is $3.26 per pound, according to NASDAQ’s website. Local metal recycling companies said they typically buy used copper at a price between $1.50 to $3.00 per pound, depending on quality.

Rafael Pinedo of Lakeside Non-ferrous Metals, a metal recycler in Oakland, said nonferrous metals are typically sold to the company at the 100-pound minimum after a screening process and 72-hour wait period.

Local police monitor the sale and purchase of scrap metal in the Bay Area and have a system in place to notify recyclers about stolen metal. Paul Forkash, the founder of Aaron Metals in Oakland, believes that middlemen are available to take the metal to be sold in different regions.

“There are some people who are not permitted, have no business license, that will buy metal off the street and will load up a truck to take it to Southern California or Nevada,” Forkash said. “The material could be very identifiable, but yet it is being transported so far out of the area that (police) would have no way of tracking it.”

Chase Schweitzer covers crime. Contact him at cschweitzer@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @ChaseSchweitz.

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According to UCPD spokesperson Lt. Eric Tejada, four underage UC Berkeley students were hospitalized due to alcohol-related illnesses over the weekend. The incidents occurred at Units 1 and 2, International House and Clark Kerr Campus.

“And those are just the ones we were called for,” Tejada said. “Some instances go unreported to police.”

Prior years have seen an uptick in alcohol-related incidents among students. In 2010, UCPD responded to six alcohol-related illness calls between move-in weekend and Labor Day. In 2011, it responded to 13. Since Aug. 25, there have been 13 alcohol-related hospitalizations this year.

In response to the nine alcohol-related illness incidents last weekend, Berkeley Police Department placed undercover officers in popular nightlife areas such as frat row.

According to BPD spokesperson Officer Jennifer Coats, there were plainclothes officers deployed on Friday and Saturday nights. The officers were partnering with agents from the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The target of the operation was to focus on alcohol-related offenses, including drinking in public, drinking underage and businesses selling alcohol to underage individuals.

Coats said that to prevent these incidents from occurring, BPD works closely with UCPD and Berkeley Fire Department as well as other community organizations to educate students about the dangers and consequences of unsafe party practices.

Tejada stressed the need for students to understand the consequences of unsafe partying.

“Alcohol-related cases such as these create issues for us on all levels, such as arguments, fights and sexual assaults,” Tejada said. “It really is a drain on our resources.”

Robbery-deterrent initiatives, such as directed patrols, which send officers on patrol in high-robbery areas, are impacted because these same officers must respond to alcohol-related incidents at the residence halls.

While alcohol-related issues such as these can be serious, the students who are hospitalized do not represent the majority of students, said PartySafe@Cal coordinator Karen Hughes.

“Most students keep it under control,” Hughes said.

PartySafe@Cal, whose mission is to reduce alcohol-related risks on campus, is promoting a number of initiatives to prevent unsafe partying, Hughes said.

One such initiative is the Pre-Game Huddle, a station that provides a variety of free resources to UC Berkeley students on football gamedays. Another initiative, Happy Neighbors, aims to reduce negative police contact caused by reports of loud partying and drinking by making sure new residents understand the off-campus community expectations.

Contact Matt Trejo at mtrejo@dailycal.org.

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El Monte Police Department was notified at approximately 10:40 a.m. by an unknown caller that there were bombs at CSU L.A. and “Cal State Berkeley,” according to the Associated Press. This comes after Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings, which left three people dead and more than 100 injured.

While both law enforcement officials in Los Angeles and Berkeley deemed the threat a low risk, CSU L.A. evacuated its campus, and a bomb squad was dispatched to the scene. The squad eventually found no evidence of explosives. UCPD decided to silently conduct its search of the campus and found no explosives as well, according to department spokesperson Lt. Eric Tejada.

“We determined it was a pretty low-risk bomb threat, so we did some searches of our own and decided to go business as usual on campus,” Tejada said. “Obviously, we didn’t find anything, and it was a very low-risk threat assessment, so we didn’t do a WarnMe messaging or anything like that.”

Andy Nguyen is the lead crime reporter. Contact him at anguyen@dailycal.org
and follow him on Twitter @Andy_Truc.

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Michael Drummond/File

After 10 years of working for the department as a captain, Margo Bennett has been appointed the new UCPD chief of police.

Bennett has been acting as interim chief of police since former chief Mitch Celaya stepped down from the position in December. This prompted a nationwide search for a new chief that saw the initial pool of 71 candidates narrowed down to four before Bennett was finalized.

“I’m totally honored to be receiving this appointment,” Bennett said. “This is a great department to work for, and we got some great people here, so I’m excited and anxious to get to work.”

Bennett has been with the department for more than a decade and has over 35 years of law enforcement experience, according to a statement by Associate Vice Chancellor of Business and
Administrative Services Ron Coley Thursday morning.

“She has an understanding of the culture of our community and the workings of the department that will prove invaluable as we institute the type of significant changes that are necessary to achieve our goals of exceptional security and service,” Coley said in the statement.

The selection process included a forum held at the end of March, during which students had the opportunity to talk with the four remaining finalists and ask them questions about what they would do as chief. The other finalists included Rhonda Harris, chief of police at Old Dominion University; Eric Heath, deputy chief of police at the University of Chicago; and Nate Johnson, chief law enforcement officer for the California State University system.

News of the appointment was greeted with enthusiasm by UCPD, excited at the prospect of working under Bennett.

“She’s done a great job keeping us on track,” said Lt. Eric Tejada, UCPD’s spokesperson. “She has a very inclusive management style and is very aware of the needs of the university.”

Bennett hopes to implement a better way to approach protests on campus, learning from the mistakes made during the Occupy Cal demonstrations in 2011 that saw UCPD officers strike students with batons.

“It’s a situation that many don’t want to see repeated,” Bennett said. “I regret anytime the police take action where people are hurt, especially students … I’m hoping we can develop stronger relationships across the campus to help us accomplish a common good.”

These relationships include all facets of the campus including the students, staff and faculty, according to a university press release.

“Such ties should lead to more individuals contacting the police department about crimes and suspicious activities, and working with the department to ensure that campus events can be handled through the cooperative engagement of all involved,” the statement said.

Andy Nguyen is the lead crime reporter. Contact him at anguyen@dailycal.org
and follow him on Twitter @Andy_Truc.

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At approximately 6 p.m., one of the campus’s high-voltage switch stations exploded near Anthony Hall, according to Christine Shaff, the communications director for UC Berkeley’s Department of Facilities Services. The station is a part of the electrical distribution system for the entire campus, she said.

“There wasn’t an actual outage, but there was a dip in power that did affect equipment all across campus,” Shaff said. “So some equipment did shut off because of that dip.”

It was originally thought that a power transformer on campus had exploded.

After the explosion, representatives from the Physical Plant – Campus Services, Berkeley Fire Department and officers from UCPD responded to the scene, according to UCPD spokesperson Lt. Eric Tejada. There were no injuries reported, he said.

The cause of the explosion is currently unknown, as are the extent and cost of the damage. Shaff said equipment near the site of the explosion must be de-energized first before the campus conducts a thorough investigation of the incident.

“That’s scheduled to happen (on Friday), and the investigation will happen over the weekend,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any reason to be worried. The work that they will be doing for the investigation will not impact the power supply to campus.”

Last fall, the northeast part of campus temporarily experienced a power outage after an equipment malfunction during a routine switching procedure on the campus’s physical power plant.

Andy Nguyen is the lead crime reporter. Contact him at anguyen@dailycal.org.

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Reported rapes rose from 20 in 2011 to 39 in 2012, according to crime statistics from 2012, presented by Berkeley police officers to the City Council in a special workshop last Tuesday. This is the highest number of reported rapes in Berkeley since 2000.

At the session, council members raised concerns over the fact that these incidents are largely occurring in Berkeley’s student-aged population — late teens to 30s — and that the majority of incidents happen between acquaintances, friends or people in former dating relationships.

“When someone thinks of rape, they think of a stranger attacking a woman on the street, or in her home,” said Berkeley police Capt. Andrew Greenwood. “But this is very rare in Berkeley.”

Of the incidents, there were only two reported “stranger” rapes on the street, with one completed and one attempted.

Alcohol and drugs are often involved in both city and campus reports of rape. Substance abuse played a role in nearly half of the city’s 39 incidents — 30 of which were rapes, with nine attempted rapes.

“Alcohol can play a large part in sexual assaults,” said UCPD spokesperson Lt. Eric Tejada. “At one point, the number of (campus) reports involving alcohol was almost 100 percent.”

While the number of rapes reported to the city’s police department has risen, UCPD has not seen a similar increase for incidents that occur on campus property. The rate has held steady at about two rapes per year for the past few years.

Many rapes, however, can go unverified or unreported to any officials, with students confidentially reporting to campus officials but never to the police, according to Allan Creighton, who manages the EmpowerU program through campus University Health Services.

EmpowerU, which commenced in 2011, requires all incoming students to attend a seminar about the potential for sexual assault and unwanted attention in a campus and urban setting.

Since the program’s inception, Creighton reports campus social services have seen a general “uptick” in the number of confidential reports by students.

“It’s possible that more students are reporting to us because they are beginning to be familiar with what counts as being hurt in these ways,” Creighton said.

City police, university police and campus officials all stress that if rapes or sexual assaults of any kind go unreported, it can be very difficult for a victim to get assistance or for a perpetrator to be caught.

“The No. 1 message we send is you can do things to prevent this,” Creighton said. “The No. 2 is that if this happens, it is not your fault. It doesn’t have to do with how you were dressed, and people don’t go out to be in abusive relationships.”

Megan Messerly covers city government. Contact her at mmesserly@dailycal.org.

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Michael Tao/Staff

Finals and stress are synonymous at UC Berkeley. Academic standards at the campus — ranked first among public universities by U.S. News & World Report — are predictably high, and the consequent pressure comes to a head during finals week.

To alleviate stress, the campus instituted Reading, Review and Recitation Week in 2010. But even with a week to prepare for final exams, students’ need to continue working can drive them to take measures that will enable them to read, write or program longer, including ones that could damage their health.

Coffee and highly caffeinated energy drinks are common solutions for weary students, but some feel pressured to seek more powerful stimulants like Adderall, a medication commonly prescribed to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, known as ADHD.

The use of this medication without a prescription has become increasingly common in schools, including prestigious institutions like Columbia University, where five students were arrested in 2010 for selling Adderall to their peers.

At UC Berkeley, the Adderall trade has yet to make waves in the campus community. No students have been caught distributing any prescription stimulants in the past two years, said UCPD spokesperson Lt. Eric Tejada.

Although students seek out Adderall because of its potency as a stimulant, the drug can actually disrupt studying or test-taking by causing nervousness, restlessness and headaches, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

Additionally, Adderall can be habit-forming and create a need for users to take increasingly larger doses, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns.

Despite the potential consequences, students are finding ways to get Adderall to aid their studies.

One UC Berkeley senior who wished to remain anonymous said he received an Adderall pill from a friend who had a prescription in the fall 2011 semester. He had three finals scheduled for one day and did not believe he could successfully complete them without the aid of Adderall.

After getting a total of three hours of sleep in the two days leading up to those finals, the student took the pill after completing one final, at about midday, and remained awake until 4 a.m. the next day.

“It made me extremely jittery,” the student said. “My last midterm ended at 10 p.m., but I wasn’t tired, so I went to see a movie.”

“Given the choice, I’d rather manage my time well than take Adderall again and chance addiction,” the student said. “If I was to ever take it again, it’d have to be for a very similar circumstance, like if I need to take the GRE or MCAT where the test is four or five hours.”

Adderall is selling for up to $7 per pill around campus, the senior said.

Students who are prescribed Adderall to treat ADHD say they require the drug in order to sustain focus while they study instead of the matter being a choice. UC Berkeley sophomore Thomas Engel has taken Adderall by prescription since middle school, when he was diagnosed with the disorder, and he says he can hardly function without it.

“I can’t keep my mind on tasks that I want to do,” Engel said. “My brain wants to do 10 things at a time all the time, and if I don’t take the medication, it’ll make me very inefficient.”

Similar to what sometimes happens with medical marijuana, some students can find doctors who will easily prescribe Adderall, Engel said, but overall standards for diagnosis of ADHD are high. Representatives for the Tang Center could not confirm whether any students have ever been caught lying to seek a prescription.

“During my first semester, I tried not to tell anyone I was taking Adderall because I didn’t want them to ask for it,” Engel said. “You hear about how it’s abused all the time, and I wanted to avoid that.”

Contact Christopher Yee at cyee@dailycal.org.

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Kody Smith was arrested last Wednesday in a hotel room in Fremont, said UCPD Lt. Eric Tejada. On Sept. 10, Smith allegedly threatened two students in two separate incidents into withdrawing money from an on-campus ATM. Police said Smith pressured the victims to buy several magazine subscriptions, and when the victims declined, Smith walked the victims to the ATM located in the Golden Bear Cafe, where they handed him money.

According to Tejada, the department received a tip that Smith was in Fremont. The department worked with Fremont Police Department to make an arrest at about 1:40 p.m. at a Days Inn hotel. Smith was charged with two counts of robbery.

One of the magazine victims previously reported that Smith and two accomplices had threatened her. Police are still looking to find Smith’s accomplices, Tejada said.

After UCPD released information about these incidents, other students came forward with allegations that they had also been approached by people selling magazine subscriptions on Sproul dating as far back as last spring. Tejada said that Smith and his companions are also suspects in similar crimes at San Francisco State University. He added that the investigation is still under way and that the department is hoping to tie Smith to similar cases across California and possibly Nevada.

According to the Alameda County website, Smith was booked into Santa Rita Jail and is set to have his arraignment — where the court will inform him of the charges against him — on Monday.

Chloe Hunt covers crime. Contact her at cthunt@dailycal.org.

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Randy Adam Romero/File

On Nov. 9 of last year, more than 1,000 protesters assembled on the steps of Sproul Hall in a statement of solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Almost exactly one year later, a walkout planned for Thursday on campus hopes to rekindle that spirit and raise awareness of declining state support for public education.

The demonstration has been organized by a conglomerate of groups called the Public Education Coalition, which includes members from Students for a Democratic University, affirmative action group BAMN, the UC workers union UAW 2865 and others.

State funding for the university has decreased dramatically over the last decade, amounting to just 11 percent of the system’s budget in 2011-12. Thursday’s demonstration comes just two days after one of the first indicators that state funding may return to the university.

On Tuesday, voters in California passed Proposition 30, an income and sales tax measure that will provide for increased funding of public education. Had the proposition failed, the University of California would have incurred a $250 million midyear cut.

“(Prop. 30) shows it’s clear that there is a recognition that it’s time for corporations, banks and the wealthiest to be taxed and start paying their fair share,” said BAMN organizer Yvette Felarca. “But we need to continue the movement and continue to fight for fair funding for all the public universities, colleges and K-12 schools.”

But according to Brooks Ishler, who is leading a campus group that asks students to think critically about protest strategies like the walkout, the measure’s passage points to a far more effective way to deal with state funding shortfalls. Ishler says state cuts are the real problem and that Prop. 30 represents the state taking action to combat that problem.

“Prop. 30 is an example of people sitting down, thinking about the issues and coming up with a result,” Ishler said. “We see the walkout as wasting time and money.”

Ishler’s group Rational Moderates takes issue with what it calls the “propaganda” spread by walkout promoters. It implores students to gather facts and think deeply about the issues before they demonstrate.

The Rational Moderates might not be the only sign that the atmosphere that influenced last year’s protest has changed. Last year, then-ASUC president Vishalli Loomba sent out a campuswide email endorsing the walkout before it happened. Current president Connor Landgraf has not disseminated a similar email about the demonstration, and the Occupy movement has significantly weakened on a national level.

On the other hand, administrators sent out a campuswide email last week reminding students about campus policy regarding time, place and manner restrictions for protesting. Some professors have also canceled classes in support of the noon rally.

“There wasn’t as much publicity for this event as there was last year, but I have received announcements, and students in my class know about it,” said Marcial Gonzalez, an associate professor of English.

Gonzalez teaches an American Cultures class this semester and said that all AC courses cover an element of political resistance.

“In our class, I gave students the opportunity to talk about the issues and have a spirited and friendly discussion,” Gonzalez said.  “Not everyone agreed with the walkout, but they voiced their opinion with good reasons.”

On Nov. 9, 2011,  UCPD called in officers from other departments through mutual aid to assist with management of the protest. This year, UCPD has no reason to expect the demonstration will be problematic despite coinciding with the one-year anniversary, according to UCPD Lt. Eric Tejada.

“Just like any protest, we will assess and act as needed to protect life and property,” Tejada said. “As usual, if it’s a peaceful protest, we will just observe.”

Contact Jacob Brown at jbrown@dailycal.org

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UCPD announced the release of its annual campus crime statistics report Friday, showing an increase in the number of sexual offenses reported on campus in 2011 and a significant decrease in the number of reported burglaries.

The UC Berkeley Campus Annual Security report, a compilation of crime statistics and safety guidelines, is published annually in accordance with the Clery Act, a statute requiring any university receiving federal aid to provide a statistical review on crime conducted on university property.

The annual report covers crime from various categories, including campus property, campus housing, public property adjacent to campus, noncampus buildings including fraternities, sororities, co-ops and the University Village Albany and “The Box.” The area encompassed by “The Box” surrounds the campus and is bound by Shattuck Avenue to the west, Prospect Street to the east, Dwight Way to the south and Virginia Street to the north.

Within campus property, which includes any building owned or controlled by UC Berkeley or within the same contiguous geographical area, UCPD saw a stark rise in the number of sexual offenses reported last year, jumping from four in 2010 to 24 in 2011, according to the report.

In April 2011, former University Health Services doctor Robert Kevess was charged with 19 counts of sex crimes against former patients. Tejada said these charges account for the increased number of offenses.

Still, multiple incidents of sexual offenses not related to those allegations were also reported. In April 2011, two instances of sexual battery and one incident of sexual assault were reported near West Gate on campus in a week.

Christine Ambrosio, director of women’s resources at the Gender Equity Resource Center, helps victims after an attack. She speculated that rising numbers of sexual offenses could in part be related to more accessible methods for reporting.

“My numbers have been the same, but I have seen an increase of folks coming in for people who are friends,” Ambrosio said. “That may be why more people are coming forward, because we’ve made a specific effort on educating people.”

Ambrosio said the Gender Equity Resource Center, UCPD and the UHS Tang Center all collaborate to prevent future crime and to counsel past victims.

“We all kind of share pieces of the puzzle,” Ambrosio said. “Each of us has a role in terms of preventing violence, and we communicate with each other on any ways to support students.”

Similar collaborations include safety measures like EmpowerU, a UC program that began last year and aims to develop educational programs that address sexual offenses. According to UCPD’s Safety Counts website, UCPD has also partnered with the Gender Equity Resource Center to implement the CalRad program, which emphasizes self-defense training for women.

According to the annual report, the number of bike thefts in the campus category has increased from 182 incidents in 2010 to 236 in 2011. Other miscellaneous items stolen in the campus category, like laptops, purses and cellphones, have gone up from 437 in 2010 to 585 in 2011.

“We’ve definitely increased patrols in the area of south campus, due to the increase of theft reported,” said UCPD Lt. Eric Tejada.

On the other hand, the number of burglaries reported has decreased, dropping from 46 to 25 in the noncampus category and 63 to 40 in the campus category from 2010 to 2011.

Tejada said a factor contributing to this trend could be UCPD’s heightened alcohol enforcement, adding that alcohol is a huge factor in criminal activity, especially in sexual offenses.

“We’ve done our own patrols in response, and we’ve stepped up on campus patrols and vehicles on campus,” said Tejada. “We’re trying to bulk our forces back up to effectively combat crime.”

Contact Virgie Hoban at vhoban@dailycal.org

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