The University of South Florida Police Department released its 2024 crime report for the Tampa campus, and it showed vehicle theft is the biggest problem.
Thieves’ favorite choice? Electric bicycles and scooters.
The annual Security & Fire Safety Report includes crime statistics from the 2024 calendar year, along with updates to previous years’ numbers.
It also includes reports from off-campus locations within the department's jurisdiction of up to 1,000 feet from university boundaries.
Motor vehicle theft saw the biggest annual increase, up from 109 in 2023 to 175, a 60.5% increase.
Of those reports, 170 involved e-bikes or scooters.
As students and staff are not allowed to bring those vehicles inside campus buildings, the department recommends locking them with hardened “U-shaped” locks.
In March 2025, the Clery Act, which defines crime and crime data reporting standards for colleges, began including e-bikes and scooters in motor vehicle theft statistics.
As a result, USF changed its 2022 figures from five thefts to 16 and in 2023 from 11 to 109.
University police reported two homicides in 2024. In one, a USF student died of a fentanyl overdose in a residence hall on campus in February. Four people were later arrested in connection with the incident.
The other was the June shooting death of rapper Julio Foolio in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn across Fowler Avenue from campus. The Tampa Police Department, which investigated the case, said it was a targeted shooting related to rival Jacksonville gangs.
Aggravated assaults were unchanged from 2023 at six.
Dating violence incidents saw a drop from 10 to five, while domestic violence incidents increased from six to eight.
Stalking crimes doubled from nine in 2023 to 18 last year.
There were 187 arrests made in connection with drug violations, up from 120 in 2023. However, on-campus arrests went down from 58 to 29.
Eight arrests were reported in 2024 for liquor violations, up from four.
Twenty-one arrests were reported for weapons violations, compared wth 16 in 2023.
