Students at Risk of Phone Theft Downtown

By Jillian Gaier
Every Thursday night, thousands of eager UT students muster into cabs headed
toward one destination: Sixth Street. Upper and lower classmen alike flood the streets
and crowd the bars, reveling in Austins historic entertainment district.
For many, Dirty Sixth embodies the ideal college nightlife, providing students
with easy access to drinks, music and peers. But sometimes, a night downtown generates
more costly consequences than just a hangover the next morning.
I love going downtown on the weekends but I have to admit, Im always
impressed with myself when I make it back home with everything I went there with,
Kate Beispel, a UT student, said.
Beispels luck ran out on Sept. 18 when her phone went missing at Burnsides
Tavern on Sixth Street. But her phone wasnt simply lostit was stolen by a serial
pickpocket.
The theft of Beispels phone was not a rare occurrence, nor was it an isolated
incident. In fact, the 78701 ZIP code, which includes the downtown area, has retained
one of the top five highest annual theft rates in the entire city, according to the Austin
Police Department website. As a result, UT students are at a heightened risk for phone
theft whenever they socialize on Sixth Street.
It was no coincidence that the night Beispels phone was stolen, five other college
students lost their phones at Burnsides as well.

We were told by a confidential informant that Freedom Machado steals phones

downtown, APD Detective Eric Cleveland said.
After conducting surveillance on the 27-year-old suspect all night, Cleveland and
his unit arrested Machado for theft by appropriation, a Class A misdemeanor.
In Machados arrest affidavit, Cleveland said that police located all six stolen
iPhones, along with 19 empty iPhone cases, in Machados car.
Maddie Wakeham, one of Machados six victims, remembered having her phone
in hand just five minutes before realizing it was gone.
When I checked my purse and my phone wasnt there, I turned on the Find My
iPhone app and found out that it was off, she said. I didnt call in a police report
because I just assumed that it got stolen.
Instead of calling the police, Wakeham said she went back to Burnsides the
following day to see if a bouncer or bartender had seen it lying around. To her
knowledge, the phone was gone for good.
Joey Peters, a bartender at another bar on Sixth Street, said typically bars get calls
about lost and stolen phones at least twice a week.
If they loose it here, we have no trace of it, he said. There are too many
people in and out. On a busy night, well click in like 2,000 people. We have no way to
track everyone.

Soon after her trip back to Burnsides, Wakeham got a call from an APD officer
telling her to retrieve her phone. She said police asked all of the victims to give sworn
statements and recall the sequence of the previous nights events.
While the crime was solved in this case, victims dont always regain their lost
property.
A majority of the time, phone theft cases are suspended, pending further leads,
Cleveland said. This enables detectives to move onto higher-priority calls until more
information about the phone is developed.
Overall, he thinks that females are the most prone to theft downtown because their
purses are at the hand level of pickpockets.
Females are used to people bumping up against them at crowded bars, so they
dont necessarily associate a bump with someone opening up the outside flap of their
purse and taking their phone, Cleveland said.
As a witness of these situations, Peters was able to confirm that the bar
environment makes females especially vulnerable.
Drunk, college girls are most at risk because they give off the impression that
theyre careless with their belongings, he said.
Peters also advised downtown-goers not to get intoxicated to the point where they
lose control of their senses. Keep track of your belongings, Peters said. If youre
aware and alert at all times, youll be fine.