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Theft Prevention
The frequent crime that occurs on the SMU campus is theft, a crime of opportunity. Theft is a highly preventable crime since the only requirement in prevention is personal responsibility.
To best explain a crime of opportunity, we will refer to the basic triangle. The triangle has three sides. If one side of the triangle is removed, it collapses.
The same is true with theft. Theft has three requirements--desire, ability and opportunity.
The first requirement is desire. A thief must have the desire to commit a crime.
The second requirement is ability or skill. The thief must possess a certain ability or skill to commit the crime.
The third requirement is opportunity. This is the only side of the triangle that we control. The thief must wait until the opportunity arrives to commit the crime. Without opportunity, a crime cannot be committed and the triangle will collapse.
As a member of Hilltop Watch, you will be expected to set examples for ending opportunity theft by educating others in your department of precautions they must take to keep opportunity theft from occurring.