As the Bailey/ Howe Library gets busier in preparation for finals week, students may be glad to hear that laptop thefts have not occurred for the last two weeks.   Although UVM police have not identified a suspect, library staff members said that the thefts have died down ever since they almost captured a man they believed to be the thief.     A man strongly suspected of committing these crimes was pursued by library staff, but was not apprehended, said Angus Robertson, director of access services at Bailey/Howe Library.   “[He] attempted to leave by a ???re exit door down stairs in a non-public area,” Robertson said. “And when we approached him, he ran away.”   Robertson said that he had reason to believe that this suspect was the thief because the crimes stopped immediately after the incident and two laptops had been stolen 10 minutes prior to approaching the man.   “A couple of employees got a good look at him and I think that spooked him,” he said.   This person did a fair amount of damage to some lockers upstairs and sawed them open, Robertson said.   The UVM police have been investigating the crimes and Robertson said that they have been impressively handling the situation.   The police have not of???cially arrested anybody, but they are very eager to, Robertson said. They had several of???cers investigating and cruising the building up to the incident where this man ??ed the building.   The occurrences have been scattered, but there had been a real increase at Bailey/Howe between Oct. 17 and Nov. 2, Sgt. Jim Phelps said.   The police are working toward educating students to reduce the number of crimes on campus, he said.   The thefts have affected students across the University such as junior Sam Grabel whose laptop was stolen out of his backpack in the library.   “I went downstairs to grab coffee and have a cigarette,” he said. “When I came back, my laptop and charger were gone.”   Grabel said that he lost most of what I had been working on including a midterm paper with all of the sources and PDFs that he had searched for.   “Non-academically, I lost all of my music, purchased movies and TV shows, as well as sensitive information such as my SSN and some credit card numbers,” he said.