The ASU Police department has focused a majority of its resources on Vista Del Sol on weekends since the spring semester of 2009, spokesman Cmdr. Jim Hardina said.
While residence halls and other ASU residential facilities funnel complaints through community assistants, complaints at Vista Del Sol often go straight to the police, Hardina said.
“Vista is the busiest place we have,” he said. “Vista is the [student housing] where we typically get the most fight calls and the most party calls.”
Hardina said the enforcement officers were busy in the spring semester, and the situation hasn’t changed this fall.
“Typically most of the calls for service we get within a residential hall are related to marijuana, drinking, parties or loud music,” he said. “Vista Del Sol is the opposite.”
Calls from Vista residents are mostly neighbors complaining about noise while they are trying to sleep at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., he said.
In this regard, Vista Del Sol is more like an apartment complex than a college residential hall even though it’s on campus, Hardina said.
Apartment living is more conducive to parties and fights, which are more common at Vista Del Sol than other places on campus, he said.
“The Vista Del Sol night shift gets the largest share of our police resources,” Hardina said.
Criminal justice sophomore Mikhail Orlov, a resident at Vista Del Sol, said he doesn’t see the need for the extra enforcement on weekends.
“From a personal perspective, I don’t see there being many incidents,” he said.
Orlov said the police presence on weekends is more likely due to residents getting angry with their neighbors but that most residents “understand they live in a college environment.”
Over the past weekend three people were arrested at Vista Del Sol, in two alcohol-related incidents, one trespassing incident, and a student reported a theft, according to the department’s arrest records.
Orlov said he hasn’t seen many fights at the complex.
He also said the police presence could be attributed to false calls bringing officers to the residence for nothing at all.
“I think [the police] are just assuming there is going to be no control, when really that is not the case,” he said.
Vista Del Sol, owned by American Campus Communities, was not available for comment on the police presence at the complex.
Assistant Chief of Police Jay Stradling said the department treats every ASU resident facility in the same manner.
“Calls for service or problems dictate more response to one place than another,” he said. “Certainly Vista Del Sol is one of those places.”
Reach the reporter at nathan.meacham@asu.edu.
