Responding to a report of an armed robbery, a squad of police officers swarmed one of the red houses next to the ULab with their weapons drawn on Oct. 25. They searched the building, sweeping for the reported criminal who was supposedly robbing the building. However, the only evidence of a crime committed was a single broken window, disclosed two days before.
Junior Chancellor Avolio was in the ULab when he saw the police exit one of the buildings by crawling out of a first-floor window.
“They were coming out of one of the houses,” Avolio said. “They were walking around the house, climbing in it.”
Neighborhood resident Ben Penwell was perplexed with the police response.
“They were there for five or ten minutes,” Penwell said. “After that, we saw them walking away. The guys that were walking, they looked happy, not distressed. So I thought it was nothing.”
Two days before the incident, UPrep notified the homeowners about the broken window.
“The cops were actually pretty upset when I got there because it was not a robbery in progress,” Head of School Ronnie Codrington-Cazeau said. “We had called the owners of the red houses two days ago to let them know their houses had been broken into. The police in Seattle do not respond to a robbery that’s already happened. They only respond is there’s a robbery in progress.”
Director of Facilities Robert Thom witnessed the entire event from the street and the extensive police presence concerned him. UPrep never communicated to the Seattle Police that there was a person on the property.
“I don’t believe there was a person on property. I never saw a person on property,” Thom said.
Two days earlier, Thom arrived on campus to start his morning routine.
“I’m typically the first person on property,” Thom said. “When I went over to the ULab on Wednesday morning, I noticed that some of the windows had been removed on the back side of the red house, and debris was laying on the ground, so it looked as if somebody made entry to the red houses.”
Upon seeing the scene, Thom notified his boss, Head of School for Finance and Operations Susan Lansverk.
“She then communicated with the owners via text and did not get a response from the owners,” Thom said.
Lansverk declined to provide the name of the owner to The Puma Press, citing school policy.
Thom is sometimes concerned with how the owners of the red houses manage their property.
“The owners love that we’re monitoring their property on a daily basis,” Thom said. “But we’re not in the business of providing security for their property. They own it. They should be more involved with it.”
Thom has worked at UPrep for a little over a year, and in this time he has observed what he calls the “dilapidated” state of the red houses.
“Boarded up windows, graffiti, a yard that’s not very attractive, no trespassing signs posted all over the property,” Thom said. “Obviously nobody has been taking care of it.”
Head of School Ronnie Codrington-Cazeau does not believe the red houses pose a threat to students but is still concerned about their presence in the midst of the campus.
“I don’t think UPrep students are actually in danger, honestly. As soon as Robert [Thom] gets to school, he walks by the red houses. He makes sure that everything looks okay,” Codrington-Cazeau said. “Our students are just kind of walking on the sidewalk past them. Nobody is living there. You’re not going into the backyard or peering into the windows. They’re just really an eyesore.”
Thom points out that the owners are often “absent” from their property.
“There was a tent there during [last] school year that was on the backside of the property,” Thom said. “We let the owners know…we have a school. We can’t have transient people living on your property in a tent.”
UPrep has had conversations regarding purchasing the duplexes multiple times over the last ten years, but the school’s offers were rebuffed.
“We have made several offers, our offers have all been refused” Codrington-Cazeau said. “It’s not like they just don’t want to sell to us. They just don’t want to sell.”
Thom believes that the owners “think the property is worth much more money than maybe what the school has offered. I can’t believe that. I don’t know if they think that they’re going to, at some point, fix it up and then, you know, become landlords again. I don’t know what it would take.”
