St. Patty’s weekend crime drops

The rainy weather did not stop students from celebrating St. Patrick's Day early on Saturday, but university Police Chief Patrick Ogden said there was a surprisingly low number of arrests made that day.

"There was an increase in alcoholic arrests during the daytime, but the only thing that was unusual was that it was during the day," Ogden said. "Because it was St. Patrick's Day, people tend to do more day-drinking, whereas on the weekends drinking does not start until the evening."

In previous years there have been more arrests on St. Patrick's Day weekend, but the weather played a big part in the decrease this year, Ogden said.

Junior Alexa March agreed.

"If the weather had been nicer, more people would have gone out, which would have led to more chances to get arrested," March said. "This weekend was a good business day [for bars] because of all the drunks, but you can't get out of hand."

Sophomore Marisa Hall said when she went to Grotto Pizza last year, the restaurant was packed, but this year seemed to stay home.

"I feel like people didn't know whether to go out before or after St. Patrick's Day," Hall said.

There were approximately three arrests made during the day, all related to drinking and disorderly conduct, Ogden said. A total of 10 alcohol-related or alcohol incidents occurred on Saturday, including three underage consumption arrests, three DUI arrests and four arrests of students who were acting disorderly, though, not all of the individuals were detained.

"We did not arrest all of these students," Ogden said. "We usually just refer them to student conduct, unless they start to act disorderly."

Officers were sent on patrol to cover many other events this weekend like the high school basketball championship at the Bob Carpenter Center and made a few arrests at the event, Ogden said. There was an alcohol-related fight there, he said.

There were also no alcohol overdoses reported Saturday, Ogden said.

"Usually when we have events like homecoming or St. Patrick's Day, students drink earlier in the day which can be dangerous and lead to overdoses, but we did not have any of those this year," he said

University Police had five extra officers on patrol in addition to the regular staff on weekends.

"I was definitely expecting more arrests," Ogden said. "People see the police everywhere and think, ‘Maybe I should not act disorderly,' so there is a constant reminder of the police being out there which helped."

 He said the numbers were surprisingly low for St. Patrick's Day and believes the presence of the police is to thank for this. 

"All in all I was pretty pleased," Ogden said. "Hopefully people start getting the message to behave themselves."

Several attempts were made to obtain the Newark Police Department's arrest reports from Saturday, but a spokesman said late Monday that the reports would not be available to The Review until Tuesday morning.