When students leave Ames for the summer, some of the crime they are associated with follows them out the door, law enforcement officials said.

Loras Jaeger, director of the Department of Public Safety, said although the occurrence of offenses decreases, the proportion of offenses does not change much. He said alcohol-related offenses remain the most common.

“We still have alcohol offenses such as drunk driving, public intoxication and underage possession of alcohol,” Jaeger said. “These are year-round issues we deal with on a daily basis.”

Capt. Gene Deisinger, program manager of DPS, said thefts on campus tend to be popular in the summer because there are not as many people around to see someone steal something.

“Sometimes we experience more computer thefts and that kind of thing,” Deisinger said.

Sgt. Mike Johns of the Ames Police Department said he notices a few more noise violations in the summer.

“They’re not big things, but we get noise complaints because people are in their pools after hours,” he said. “Other than that we don’t really have anything that’s summer specific.”

Deisinger said the number of authorized staff at DPS remains about the same during the summer as it does during the school year.

“Overall we might be down an officer in a given shift but our authorized strength stays the same,” he said.

Johns said the police department keeps the same size staff as well. One change summer does bring is thousands of visitors to Iowa State.

“We do have a large number of visitors,” Deisinger said. “We don`t have a lot of crime attached to that but our university demographics change.”

Jaeger said the safety of these guests and new students is a priority to DPS.

“Because we have summer orientation for new students, we do spend more time on traffic enforcement to ensure their safety as they walk on campus,” Jaeger said.