A man impersonating a police officer broke into off-campus Vanbrugh College accommodation Fairfax House in the early hours of Tuesday morning, before fleeing the scene after several confrontations with students.
The incident occurred at about 1:30am. Fairfax resident Rhys Oakley first saw the man, dressed as a police officer, climbing through a first-floor kitchen window opposite his room. Oakley told Vision: “I thought it was a bit odd, so my friend and I went to the kitchen to see what was going on. I knocked on the door and asked: ‘Who is it?’ The reply was: ‘It’s a policeman’. This was odd, so I tried to open the door but was stopped as the man pushed against me and exclaimed that he had ‘a person in custody’ and that ‘everything’s fine’.”
Oakley, who didn’t see the man’s face, described him as “confident and coherent,” and as such “thought it must have been a police officer.” However, Fred Nathan, another Fairfax resident, caught a closer glimpse and described the man as a “dodgy looking copper” with a “shabby uniform… a lip piercing and missing teeth.” The man was wearing a high-visibility jacket with ‘POLICE’ on the back, black trousers and black boots, and as such closely resembled an officer of the North Yorkshire Police.
The intruder also tried to enter study bedrooms throughout the house. Martyn Thomas, a second-floor resident, described one such incident to Vision: “I was just drifting off to sleep when someone tried to open my bedroom door. I then heard them go into the bathroom next door, and so waited in the corridor to see who it was, assuming it was a drunken student. When it opened, it was a shifty-looking guy dressed in a police outfit. He told me someone had broken into Fairfax and he had just arrested them.
“Later on, after talking to the others, I realised he was a fake, and had tried to get into my room to steal something. I was quite shaken and felt like an idiot for not asking him for I.D.”
Half an hour after entering the first-floor kitchen, the suspect fled the scene as a fire-door alarm was set off. According to Oakley, “it wasn’t until this point that university security showed up.” Oakley stated that the incident was “handled well by the security, as he made checks around the grounds and assured everyone.” He continued, however, that it is “frustrating that it took this long for security to show up.” Police officers have warned residents to be vigilant in case the suspect returns.
In June Vision reported on the poor state of facilities at Fairfax House, with a particular focus on the lack of security provided. In March, a student saw his room broken into after thieves entered through an inadequately-secured window, which did not have a lock. This led to residents asking that CCTV be installed on-site due to Fairfax’s off-campus location on Heslington Road, a burglary hotspot. Their requests went unfilled.
Vanbrugh provost David Efird told Vision: “I have asked the college tutor for Fairfax to speak with the students affected to see if they need any support, and I have asked that students be made aware of the importance of vigilance about security, particularly windows.”
North Yorkshire Police visited the house the following day and took statements. Officers also tried to take fingerprints from the kitchen through which the break-in had occurred. Their attempts was unsuccessful, however, apparently due to the filthy state of the kitchen.
Fred the Bloc Rep didnt at all think it suspicious that this guy had a lip ring and looked shabby?
I did find it odd, he didn’t seem legit from the moment I set eyes on him, and speaking to the man only enhanced my suspicions. Indeed, I was the one who phoned security which sparked off the (real) police investigation, so get your facts straight.
In this case it would probably have been better to phone the police directly rather than relying on campus security to, as they’d probably have been able to act faster.
That said, I had to chuckle at the exchange:
“Who is it?”
“It’s a policeman”