NEWS
Look out, Platteville: stop signs laced with gel
Looking for a print version?
Simply choose ‘Print’ on your computer and a printer-friendly document will be generated.
Also by Pamela Buechel:
- Study: medical interns ignore ethics code (September 12, 2006)
- Facebook addds new friend (November 29, 2006)
- Student writers take spotlight (September 18, 2006)
- La Crosse to reconsider drink specials (December 1, 2006)
- UW, state struggle for accessibility (September 20, 2006)
Related Stories:
- Former UW-Platteville official wins discrimination suit (February 11, 2004)
- Platteville aims to keep Bears legacy (January 31, 2007)
- Badger Liquor returns signs to window (February 25, 2002)
- Madison features vintage, modern signs downtown (February 25, 2005)
- Simulation reverses Jim Crow (February 14, 2006)
by Pamela Buechel
Tuesday, October 3, 2006
Late-night mischief has Platteville police looking to catch street sign thieves purple-handed.
For years, an average of five to six "named" street signs have gone missing around the University of Wisconsin-Platteville campus each week. But the problem has gotten more serious recently, as the focus has shifted away from street signs to stop signs.
Platteville police say twelve stop signs have gone missing since school started last month.
The missing stop signs have caused fatal accidents in the past, and Platteville residents are worried that serious wrecks will now happen again in the near future.
"When you take a stop sign out of there, it's only a matter of time before someone misses an intersection," Platteville Police Sgt. Terry Terpstra said in a release.
And Platteville police and residents are both placing the blame on college students.
"We haven't experienced the problem over the summer when school is out of session," Lt. Bruce Buchholtz of the Platteville Police Department said. "It's safe to assume through anecdotal evidence that the college students are removing the signs."
Police have not given up hope in finding the thieves. As a new security feature, they have started putting invisible gel on the edges of the signs. When the gel mixes with the oils of the hands it turns purple, making it easy to catch a criminal "purple-handed."
"The affects of the gel are similar to that of a permanent marker," Buchholtz said. "You have to really scrub to get it off, and in most cases it takes days."
He added that the gel has the ability to seep through gloves.
Though the number of campus police has not grown in the past couple years, lack of surveillance is not to blame for the thefts.
"I don't think we should be paying police officers to baby-sit the signs," Buchholtz said. "People should have respect for other people's property and respect for the lives that could be lost."
According to Officer Dale Burke of the UW-Madison Police Department, sign theft is no longer a major problem around the UW campus, though Randall Avenue signs were a popular target in past years.
"Sign theft hasn't been a problem in the last couple of years," Burke said. "That can be credited to the fact that we have patrolling officers at every time of the night."
Anonymous (December 12, 2006 @ 12:56pm):
I was just involved in an accident where I was riding my motorcycle and the girl ran the intersection and caused me to hit her. Some college kids ripped the stop sign out of the ground the night before. However the stop was still written on the pavement. I think she is still liable cause u could still clearly see the one way sign, and stop was still written on the pavement. I live in Chico CA and maybe u could tell the city over here to do the blue gel thing.
