Out-of-towners may be cause of area robberies

By SEAN KELLY

An Oct. 19 article in the New York Times highlighted the interesting and quirky ways people in Japan are trying to avoid street crime.

The article, which included some laugh-out-loud funny pictures, showed skirts that unfolded into a fake cloth vending machine camouflaging the woman from a would-be attacker, among other equally ridiculous items.

Funny as those things all are, I can’t help but wonder when we might start seeing them for sale in the VCB next to the Huskies sweatshirts.

Last week, the Star ran a story highlighting the recent “uptick” in robberies around town. There have been six since the semester started, with a seventh attempted Friday morning, and most of the victims have been students. This is distressing for a lot of reasons.

First off, the criminals in DeKalb are idiots. Robbing college students? If you’re looking for money, then you might not want to look at people who are thousands of dollars in debt, and have so much Ramen in their diet that they’re in danger of getting scurvy.

Secondly, if your target is walking home drunk, then they’ve run out of cash – if they still had any money, they wouldn’t have left the bar. You’d think a college town could gather together smarter criminals. An ECON major would make a great mugger.

But the worst part is that these robbers aren’t majoring in anything. They don’t go here. They don’t live here. And, no offense, DeKalb isn’t exactly a happening town, unless you’re a big fan of corn and thrift shops, which I’m guessing our bandits aren’t.

As Lt. Gary Spangler of the DeKalb Police Department told the Star last week, the criminals in question are typically visiting someone here. Such workaholics, these guys, getting a little time on the clock, even when they’re away visiting friends.

And that’s the truly upsetting part of this: someone invited them. I can’t say with any degree of certainty whether that someone is a citizen of DeKalb or a student at NIU, but I’d be willing to bet that it’s the latter. And to those students, I have to ask:

What’s going through your heads?

Is no party complete without your friend from back home, who apparently can’t go 48 hours without cracking someone’s skull for their wallet? Do you have so little regard for your classmates that you allow this sort of thing to be perpetrated upon them?

To be fair, it’s possible these strays didn’t follow students home, rather these wannabe highwaymen could be here to visit locals.

Why they’d want this sort in their hometown, attacking their friends and neighbors, making their home a little less home-like, is beyond me, especially when it’s so easy to avoid people.

Just repeat after me: “I’m sorry, Unidentified Male, I’m really busy this weekend.”

Good one, isn’t it? I’ve been using that gem on friends, ex-girlfriends, relatives and Army recruiters for years. And it certainly works better than dressing up as a Coke machine.

The point, whoever you are, is that you are responsible for your friends. You’re responsible for anything they do while they’re here visiting you, and you will be judged by the company you keep.

The quickest way to stop attacks like this from happening is for the robbers’ connections here in town to make it abundantly clear that they’re not welcome.