UCF student Ryan McKinney was confused when he went to get into his car in the Tower’s Parking Garage E on the first day of spring 2015 semester.
He could have sworn he parked on the second floor, but just to make sure he checked the first, then the third and finally the fourth. He started to get the feeling that something was wrong.
His first car, a 1997 Honda Civic with custom amplifiers and subwoofer, was gone.
When police arrived they found his car on the fifth floor, an estimated $1,800 just in engine parts and spark plug wires gone–that’s not even counting the missing custom car audio.
“In order to park in the covered parking of Garage E, it costs $150 for three semesters,” McKinney said. “When I paid $150, I was not expecting gold-plated pillars or anything special, however, I was expecting a reasonable level of safety.”
McKinney took to a Change.org petition to air his grievances and ask for support to place more cameras in parking garages. In the garage that McKinney had his car stolen, there is only one camera place right at the entrance/exit.
KnightNews.com showed the petition to SGA President and Board of Trustees Member Weston Bayes who is in support of placing more cameras in garages.
“It’s definitely something that’s been brought up in the past, students get there cars hit everyday and the best thing we can do is have campus police say ‘sorry’. To have some type of video evidence to understand who’s in the garage at that time, that would definitely help students,” Bayes said.
However, Bayes said that some of the garages are more difficult to place cameras in depending on the garage’s infrastructure.
“I know for example Garage I which has been here for a long time that takes a lot of money because you have to go into the infrastructure and re-do that, but a garage like H, which is newer and more hollowed out in the beams, the infrastructure is there to put the cameras in,” Bayes said.
