Lights to be installed near site of incident last week
A USC police officer is being investigated for his conduct after last week’s armed robbery in Five Points that involved four USC students.
According to one of the victims, who asked not to be named, the students sat on a curb until around 3 a.m. as they waited for an investigator to arrive and for police to arrest three suspects late Tuesday night. It was cold, she said, and they weren’t offered a blanket. She eventually called her sorority “big sister” to bring them food and water.
The women had been robbed at gunpoint around midnight in a driveway behind Pavlov’s Bar and the Salty Nut Cafe. No one was hurt, beyond scrapes and bruises from being tackled by the suspects.
One USC police officer in particular was unsympathetic, she said, asking why they were in Five Points at night.
“He was really rude to us — he was trying to blame the whole thing on us, saying that it was our faults for being out late at night,” she said.
The victim filed a complaint with USC police, and the case is being investigated, said Capt. Eric Grabski, a spokesman for the USC Division of Law Enforcement and Safety.
Grabski wouldn’t comment on the complaint or release its text, citing the ongoing investigation, but said that the officer, a sergeant, had not been the subject of a formal complaint before.
Still, the sentiment reflects the heightened safety concerns in the Five Points area, which has seen increased police patrols since Carter Strange was beaten brutally in 2011.
It was increased again last fall when one weekend saw two assaults and a robbery with shots fired and once more earlier in February, when a teenager opened fire on a police officer and two fights broke out on Harden Street, including a brawl.
As summer approaches, Ruben Santiago, Columbia’s acting police chief, said officers have been expanding their radius of their patrols to include dark areas around Five Points.
The city of Columbia and USC are also planning to install lights in the driveway where the students were robbed last week, Santiago said. Police had identified the problem there some time ago and had been trying to get lights put up “for a while.”
The Five Points Association had recognized the problem, too, said Amy Beth Franks, the association’s interim director. Before the robbery, it asked Wells Fargo, which abuts the dark driveway, if it could install surveillance cameras on the back of the building.
The association has spent more than $100,000 to put cameras up throughout the area over the last three years and still has plans to install more in spots they’re needed, according to Franks.
“This is a process, and it will take some time,” Franks wrote in an email.
Crime has fallen in the area, Santiago said. It’s down 25 percent so far this year after “a significant reduction” last year.
“We would love a crime-free zone,” Santiago said. “Unfortunately, we just have those thugs out there that just insist on trying to make people victims.”