A Fort Lewis College student may have taken his studies one step too far.

“We managed to track down the sign thief,” said Lt. Ray Shupe with the Durango Police Department, about the theft of signs being used in the campaign for April’s City Council election. “He’s a Fort Lewis College student whose major is political science.”

The student, 20-year-old Bryan Froehlicher, was charged in municipal court Friday morning and has been cited. The crime, Shupe said, is a lower class misdemeanor.

“Initially, we thought he was just taking Dick White signs,” Shupe said. “But, it turned out he was an equal-opportunity sign thief. He thought the Dick White sign was funny because of the name, but he also had a Sweetie Marbury and Dave McHenry sign, too.”

Police recovered two Dick White signs and one each for Marbury and McHenry from Froehlicher.

The thefts were reported by Kathleen Adams on March 6 after neighbors saw a young man taking a Dick White sign from her yard in historic downtown Durango and got a license plate number. A Dick White sign was also stolen from the yard of Mayor Pro-Tem Dean Brookie.

Adams was concerned not only about the theft, but about its impact on her rights during an election.

abutler@durangoherald.com