Security cameras were added to hallways in Kerr Hall after many locker thefts last year. (Rebecca Sedore / Ryersonian Staff)
Additional security cameras were installed in Kerr Hall in response to a rash of locker thefts in the winter 2013 semester, according to Ryerson security.
Combination locks made by ABUS Security Tech Germany and sold by the campus store were found to be susceptible to aluminum shim tools. A Ryersonian investigation led to the locks being pulled from shelves.
Ryerson president Sheldon Levy addressed the issue last year, saying new cameras would be installed in Kerr Hall, where many of the thefts happened.
“I believe we’ve had four cameras installed in Kerr Hall since May of 2013,” Imre Juurlink, the program lead for security risk assessment at Ryerson, said in an email.
Juurlink said Kerr Hall, the Recreation and Athletics Centre and the campus Quad have 30 cameras among them.
“A number of them are on the outside, but I’ve included them because they are attached to those buildings,” she said.
According to Tanya Fermin, Ryerson’s manager of security and emergency services, there has been a noticeable drop in locker thefts since the ABUS locks were pulled.
“If we look at a three-month stretch before the lock was pulled February, March, April of 2013 we totalled 71 ‘theft from locker reports’,” Fermin said in an email. “Compare that to October, November, December of 2013 we totalled 29 ‘theft from locker’ reports, so a decrease of just under 60 per cent.”
This story was first published in The Ryersonian, a weekly newspaper produced by the Ryerson School of Journalism, on February 12, 2014.
Ryersonian reporter. BJourn Graduate in 2014.
