Adrian Wiggins, executive director of  the Office of Campus and Public Safety, recounted a recent incident where a student made up a story about having been robbed — and said that such incidents are not uncommon among the many reports his department handles.  Morgan reported 19 robberies in 2012.

“He says,‘I stopped here to catch my breath and tie my shoe, turn around and I start running back to where I was and I saw two guys in the cut, and these two guys in the cut robbed me with a handgun.’”

The student made the report on a Tuesday, saying he had been robbed the previous Sunday.

“Because the time had passed,” Wiggins said,  “we had a little bit more time to ask him some pointed questions about what he is reporting to us.”

The Morgan police logged  all of the places the student said he was, and they looked at footage from some of the 600 surveillance cameras on campus.

“We did not see him. We did not see anyone that looked like him,” Wiggins said. “Every place that he said the alleged assailants were, we did not see anybody that fit that description, or we did not see anybody at all. We began to ask him pointed questions like, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure?’

“We brought him a big map, and a long story short is that he eventually admitted that he was not telling the truth because he wanted to get a new Bearcard, and the Bearcard office told him that it would be $25 dollars to replace the Bearcard. He heard that if you have a police report, they’ll give you a free Bearcard. So, he came in and concocted this story about being robbed.”