The UC Police Dept. began an investigation Thursday to determine who stole nearly 2,400 copies of Wednesday’s Daily Nexus and dumped them in the trash shortly after they hit the racks Wednesday morning.

UCPD has interviewed one eyewitness and is working with UCSB Asset Protection to review video surveillance from around campus to see if any cameras captured the crime. An Asset Protection employee said the review had uncovered no footage of the crime as of Thursday afternoon.

UCPD interviewed the only eyewitness to come forward so far, second-year math major Michelle Miller. UCPD Crime Prevention Officer Mark Signa, who is heading the investigation, said Miller gave him the same information she gave the Nexus on Wednesday. Miller told the Nexus that she saw an unidentified man dumping a stack of newspapers into a garbage bin near Carrillo Dining Commons at around 9:45 a.m. She described the man as medium to tall in stature, with brown hair and wearing a cap.

Signa said the UCPD’s investigation includes reviewing the logs at Carrillo to determine what students ate there and when.

Suspects would face multiple counts of petty theft, Signa said. Single copies of the Nexus are free, but additional copies cost $1 – a policy instituted after thousands of copies were stolen in 1997. Though $400 is the limit before petty theft becomes grand theft, Signa said because the thefts occurred at different locations around campus, they would be treated as separate crimes and the total value of the papers would be divided between them. A Nexus investigation early Thursday morning found papers dumped in at least nine locations.

Each copy of the Nexus costs about 50 cents to produce, including employee salaries and production costs. The dumped papers represented about 21 percent of the total daily run of 11,500 copies.