DAILY LOBO new mexico
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wednesday The Independent Voice of UNM since 1895
September 2, 2009
DNA, eBay catch bike theft suspect by Tricia Remark Daily Lobo
A man police suspect of stealing five bicycles valued between $2,250 and $12,500 was arrested on campus July 24. UNMPD said Charles Gutierrez has been sawing through protective chains and cables to steal bicycles and pawn them for at least two years. Gutierrez is charged with seven counts of larceny. Senior Rikk Murphy helped police catch Gutierrez in December after Murphy’s bicycle was stolen. “I was coming back from a class at the business center and I was walking past Zimmerman Library,” Murphy said. “I saw some guy standing there with the bicycles, pulling one out, and I thought at first, ‘Oh, this guy’s got the same kind of bicycle horn that I do.’ Then it dawned on me. I was like, ‘No, that’s my bike.’” Murphy said he chased the thief as far as he could but never caught up with him. He called UNM police and said that he saw the thief set down a coffee cup before taking the bike. “At some point I mentioned to the officer that the thief left his coffee cup down there and he got all excited,” Murphy said. “I said ‘Oh yeah, it’s still down by the bike rack.’” Murphy said the officer collected the cup but he never heard back from the UNMPD about his bike. UNMPD Detective Ronnie Rushing said the department sent the cup to state lab analysts to get a
DNA profile. “This whole process takes some time — it’s not like on television where you can get it done in 30 minutes or an hour,” Rushing said. “It takes weeks if not months.” Rushing said UNMPD received a tip from another UNM bike theft victim who saw his bike online, offered for sale on eBay by Albuquerque’s Valley Pawn Shop. Rushing said UNMPD used information from Valley Pawn and DNA from the coffee cup to pinpoint Gutierrez. “When our detectives went to the Valley Pawn Shop, they were able to tell us that Charles Gutierrez was a customer there and sold several bicycles to them,” Rushing said. He said UNMPD was able to recover five bikes from Valley Pawn and return them to students. All of the bikes recovered were valued between $450 and $2,500. “This man was stealing expensive bicycles,” Rushing said. “He had an eye for it.” Rushing said students should get the strongest bike locks they can find and write down the brand, name and serial number of their bike in case of theft. “I’ve had many people come in and say ‘Yeah, my bicycle was pink,’ but they don’t even know the brand of it,” Rushing said. “We can’t help much in those cases.” Rushing said one of the best ways students can make sure their bikes are returned to them is to get their names
see Bike theft page 3
Gabbi Campos / Daily Lobo Student Noah Storie, left, smokes Monday in a designated smoking area near Zimmerman Library. No sign is present to indicate this is a smoking area.
Locations for tobacco use still hazy by Michael T. Ruhl Daily Lobo
The tobacco-free campus policy went into effect over a month ago, but designated tobacco-use areas are still being marked. Of the 12 smoking areas on campus listed on the UNM Smoke Free Campus Web site, four are not physically marked. Also, only nine of the 12 smoking areas are circled on the online campus map. Pug Burge, chairwoman of the Smoke Free Campus Committee, said the marking of the smoking areas was disorganized, but the group did not set out to make it easy to smoke on campus anyway. “The whole idea was not to make this convenient,” Burge said. “This whole drive has been about the promotion of a healthy campus. We have been somewhat
conservative because we knew that once we identified designated smoking areas, it would be difficult to take them away.” Burge said the Physical Plant Department is in charge of installing the signs around campus, and monitoring that work wasn’t one of her priorities. “It’s been a group effort, and people in PPD have been doing their very best to get this stuff going,” Burge said. “I haven’t kept a list that I have been checking twice every day.” Win Hansen, president of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, said his organization has become the public face for smokers on campus who are displaced into “smoking ghettos” by the new policy. “The only reason we know where the smoking areas are is because we see a lot of people smoking there,” he said. “There wasn’t a
campuswide e-mail saying, ‘Here are the smoking areas on campus.’” Hansen said many students aren’t even aware of the policy. He said the lack of information presented to smokers makes the ban less effective. “To limit the information to the smokers is undermining your entire For more on UNM’s tobaccofree campus policy, check out unm.edu/smokefree case,” he said. “If you want them to be more educated about what you’re doing and to not subject other people to secondhand smoke, they need to know where they can smoke. They need to be participatory in deciding the policy as it stands.” Burge said the current signs are temporary, and she said the
see Smoking ban page 3
Meth addicts hear new message by Jim Salter
Associated Press
Jory Vander Galien / Daily Lobo In this photo illustration, a man attempts to steal a locked-up bicycle. Charles Gutierrez was arrested July 24 for stealing several bikes worth thousands of dollars in total from the UNM campus.
Inside the
Daily Lobo volume 114
issue 9
ST. LOUIS — Josh Palmer’s story has played out countless times here in the heart of meth country. Introduced to methamphetamine as a teenager, he soon became addicted, couldn’t keep a job, lost his house and lost his family. Today, he’s turned his life around, so much so that he’s part of a national anti-meth marketing campaign that was launched Tuesday in St. Louis. “At one time in my life I thought everybody was doing dope because everybody I knew was,” Palmer, 32, said after a news conference at St. Louis City Hall. “I found out there was another world out there. And I like it a lot better.” Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske was on hand Tuesday to launch the $9 million ad campaign. Missouri is among the states worst affected by methamphetamine addiction, and has ranked first in the nation for years in meth-lab busts and seizures. Wyoming, Arkansas and Nevada were the top three states in per capita use of meth among people ages 18-25 in a 2007 survey by the Substance Abuse and
Where are we?
The Zen of film making
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Mental Health Services Administration. The new campaign focuses on a message of hope — that meth addiction can be overcome. The ad blitz runs through November and will be run in newspapers, online and on TV, radio, billboards and even gas pumps. It focuses on the 16 states with the worst meth problems — Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky and Nebraska in the Midwest and Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona and New Mexico in the West. Anti-meth radio and Web ads will run nationally. “Despite the overall decline in meth usage across the country, we still have work to do,” Kerlikowske said. “This drug leaves a path of destruction that affects individuals, families and entire communities.” The ads focus on prevention and provide information to meth users and their families seeking recovery services. They target people ages 18-34, the age group most likely to use the drug. “Meth is literally stealing the lives of people across the state, specifically young people,” Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said.
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