After conducting a small investigation, Longwood University Police Department (LUPD) has concluded the missing parking decals on students’ cars are due to the fluctuation in temperature and have fallen off, according to Chief of Police Col. Bob Beach.
“Initially we had a lot of reports of people thinking they were stolen but what we would find is they would report them stolen and then a couple days someone would turn in one that was found in the parking lot or something like that and then we started doing a little investigation and found that in most cases they were coming off,” said Beach.
With the constant change in temperature from this year’s winter, the adhesion weakens said Parking Services Manager Laura Rice.
“Rain just hits your permit and rolls off but with snow, snow just sits on it and any corners that are sticking up well the snow gets up under it, I think it’s a fault with the adhesive,” said Rice. “Not a crime just mother nature showing that she’s boss”.
According to Rice, Printing Services creates the decals and has for the past four to five years.
“Hopefully we won’t have this problem next year, (Printing Services) they are experimenting for new adhesive for next year’s decal,” said Rice.
Beach said in some cases students were unaware of the sticker peeling and when they drove, it fell off.
“There’s some cases where people are pretty dogmatic that they didn’t notice it was loose so they are assuming but they’re designed so be pretty hard to steal because if you try pull it off and try to steal it they would tear and it would be pretty obvious you couldnt use it again,” said Beach.
According to Rice, last year’s decals were inside of the rear window of cars but “no one could see them” so they had to change to the outside of the window.
When checking decals, Beach said if a student was trying to use a decal that was once stolen it would draw the attention of LUPD officers to check.
Once then, the system LUPD uses to check parking decals would notify them the sticker number would be registered to another person and another car especially if they were issuing a parking ticket.
Rice said if students have either their receipt from purchasing the decal or the decal itself, Parking Services will replace the decal for free. Without either of those, Rice said students will pay a $10 for a new one.
“We have been replacing them as fast as we can but because of all this I have run out of the residential student ones so we have had to give the cardboard hang tags in place of the decal until I have new ones printed, I have placed an order with printing services,” said Rice.
Rice said Parking Services uses stickers instead of hanging tags for students due to cost while faculty and staff have hanging tags. She said if the trend of stickers falling off with mild winters, Parking Services may have to use hanging tags in the future.
Student parking decals are required to be place on the rear window of cars and have allegedly been reported stolen.