While home during the holidays, student houses in Starkville are often left empty through the month of December and into early January, which left some students susceptible to burglary to this year. 
Although there have been reports of house burglaries among students, Lieutenant John Outlaw, interim police chief at the Starkville Police Department, said automobile burglaries are more common.
However, Outlaw said because the police are aware of the potential for theft from students’ homes, they do take precautions to attempt to minimize incidents of burglary. 
“What we usually have, and what we’ve had in the past, is we get a rash of burglaries, residential on student apartments,” he said. “Over the past few years, we have saturated the area with officers checking those areas regularly, and that number has gone down.”
Tim Grider, junior anthropology major, said he returned to Starkville Dec. 30 for the day, and although he found no broken windows, picked locks or other signs of a forced entry, Grider did find a set of Bose speakers, an amplifier, a Playstation 3 and cash missing. 
Grider said he and his three roommates were aware that some student homes had been broken into over the break, but didn’t expect their own to be burglarized. 
A police report was filed with the Starkville Police Department, and Grider said an officer explained there had been a group of potentially-related burglaries across Starkville. 
“They told us that there had been a string of break-ins over the break, all connected to the same guy, about 10 houses,” he said. “They said he’s pretty good and goes for electronics and doesn’t leave any prints.”
Nearby on Greensboro Street, Anna Ballard, senior art major, returned to her house to find a broken window.
Ballard said she came back to Starkville to work and when she got to her house late at night, she opened the door to find broken glass scattered across the floor and a brick that she assumes was thrown through the window in an effort to gain entry to her house. 
Ballard said nothing was taken, but she called the police and several policemen arrived promptly to look around the house. She said initially the police were helpful and filed the report as a case of malicious mischief.
Ballard said she was shaken up at first by the incident, but after her roommates returned, she felt more secure. 
“I did (feel scared) at first,because it was just me. But it was ok timing because I left for Christmas the next day,” she said. “But now that I’m back and the window is fixed and my roommates are back I’m ok.”
Ballard also said she believes the person behind the thefts knows which homes belong to students.
“I think they were just watching really religiously and only breaking in when they knew people were gone,” she said. 
Amelia Treptow, MSU assistant director for Student Activities, said when she returned to Starkville after Christmas break, her house had been broken into and was left in a state of disarray with items stolen ranging from a TV and DVD player to laundry detergent. 
Treptow, who lives alone with her dog in what she said she considers a safe part of Starkville, said the police came to assess the situation and told her the incident was most likely the result of opportunity. 
“They were very kind with coming and taking the report and everything; unfortunately, it’s just something that happens this time of year, and I live in a safe neighborhood.They think that it was just opportunity,” she said. “They had seen that I was gone and watched my house and realized I wasn’t there.”
Like Ballard, Treptow said the break-in did initially shake her sense of security.
“Initially, I didn’t really process what had happened, and I went and stayed with friends that night so it wasn’t a big deal,” she said. “But the next day when I went back and really kind of let it all sink in, I got a little upset but I was able to go in and clean up everything and wash up and make it look like my house, and that helped.” 
Outlaw described these thefts as crimes of opportunity in which he said he suspects people check doors on cars and sometimes homes and seize that opportunity to steal items. 
Due to the fact that pinpointing the exact time and date these incidents take place is difficult, Outlaw said often there is not much the police can do about them. 
“There’s usually not much we can do, if anything, at that point because the burglary could’ve happened two weeks prior,” he said. “Usually what we do is be on the lookout for pawn slips for electronics.”