Marie Scampini glanced across the courtyard of her Veteran Avenue apartment building into the parking lot next door, where a man acting suspiciously caught her eye.
It was 5 a.m. on a February morning, and the man peered intently into the windows of the apartment building next door, wobbling back and forth as if he were drunk or high, said Scampini, a writer and Westwood resident.
It wasn’t until the next day, when her neighbor across the hall saw a man staring into her apartment window, that Scampini realized the man was trying to stare into strangers’ apartment windows without their knowledge.
“I’ve lived here for nine and a half years, and I think I was as naïve as any new student who lives here,” Scampini said. “I was under the impression that I lived in a safe, relatively quiet area. Then the crime came to me.”
From September 2013 to August 2014, university police responded to 28 incidents of peepings in the Westwood area. Of those, 23 were in the North Village, the student housing area bordered by Gayley, Veteran and Le Conte avenues.
UCPD has increased patrols in the North Village area in response to the incidents, about three-fourths of which were reported on Roebling and Kelton avenues, said university police spokeswoman Nancy Greenstein.
On July 13, police officers patrolling the North Village arrested 29-year-old UCLA alumnus Thibault Mathieu, whom officers handcuffed outside a Kelton Avenue apartment for allegedly looking inside.
About a month later, police on patrol arrested Jeffrey Lewis, 38, outside a Roebling Avenue student apartment building for allegedly peeping.
“We spotted him in the driveway by a student’s window, and he didn’t have a good reason for being there,” UCPD Lt. Mark Littlestone said in August.
Only seven of the 28 peeping incidents led to an arrest.
Scampini said after she saw the man in her building, she posted handwritten and typed signs around UCLA and Westwood Village warning students to take precautions and call police if they see peepers. She also said she has called L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office to request increased street lighting in the North Village.
Police suspected Christopher Mendicino, 47, of peeping in several of the alleged incidents. Mendicino, a Los Angeles resident, is a former employee of the Westwood Brewing Company and the Village Center Newsstand, both of which have since closed.
A UCPD officer called Scampini after police arrested Mendicino in May. The officer told her that he was likely the man who peeped into her building.
But in July, after Mendicino did not show up to his scheduled court date, UCPD released a wanted poster of him and said he was still peeping into local apartments.
Scampini told police she saw a man who looked like Mendicino in her building several days after he was first arrested. The man was standing in the shadows, staring into an apartment window at about 3 p.m., she said.
He was arrested again in August after he asked an acquaintance to store his belongings and buy him an Amtrak ticket to Santa Barbara under a false name. The acquaintance, who had seen the wanted poster, turned Mendicino in to UCPD.
Later in the month, Mendicino pleaded no contest to charges stemming from six peeping incidents. He was ordered to stay away from Westwood and UCLA for three years, and given a six-month jail sentence.
Since Mendicino was sentenced, UCPD received at least four reports of peepings in the North Village.
In September, a UCLA student reported two incidents of peepings into her Roebling Avenue apartment. No arrests have been made, and the case is still under investigation.
UCPD described the man in the first incident as white, bald and 30-35 years old. It is unclear if the second incident involved the same man.
Police say students can protect their apartments by closing and locking their doors and windows, being aware of their surroundings and calling 911 if they see suspicious activity.
Students can call UCPD at (310) 825-1491 to report information about peeping cases under investigation.