Fort Collins Police Increase Presence In Campust West

If you are familiar with Fort Collins then it should be no surprise that the Campus West area of Fort Collins is a popular area for students due to its close proximity to the CSU campus. Although the area has a majority of students occupying the homes, there are still homes for senior citizens as well as families that live in the area long term.

As the daylight comes to a close the Campus West area comes to life with house parties and intoxicated students filling the streets which is gradually becoming a bigger problem for other residents of the neighborhood as well as police. The area has the second highest call volume for police only next to Old Town.

By this summer Fort Collins Police plan on increasing their presence in the Campus West area in order to control the parties and noise violations. In the coming months Fort Collins Police Department will add four more police patrols for the area as well as a police substation.

The Campus West area, which is between Mulberry and Drake and Sheilds to Overland Trail, is no stranger to large parties including one that gained quite a bit of attention in 2011 where roughly 3,000 students came for a back to school party. The party caused ten hospitalizations and the arrest of two CSU football players. Parties of that size are pretty unusual and quite rare but on any given weekend, parties serving 50-200 are fairly common.

Fines for noise violations in Fort Collins can be as high as $1,000. CSU offers a program to students throwing parties allowing them to register their party with the school. If the party gets a call for being to loud police will call them directly to give them a verbal warning to end the party within the next 20 minutes allowing the students to avoid that hefty $1,000 fine.

As the enrollment of students at CSU gets higher each year, it would only be expected that the late night parties will increase as well. Fort Collins Police as well as the CSU Campus Police are teaming together to come up with solutions for the noise complaints.

[Coloradoan]