RCMP Community Connection for the week of October 2-8

Mission

2023-10-12 11:06 PDT

Welcome to the Mission RCMP Community Connection for the week of October 2-8, 2023

Here’s a snapshot of some of the work we did last week:

Calls for service last week: 291
Proactive patrols of identified hot spots: 10
Curfew checks completed: 2

Over the past week, several vehicles have been stolen in Mission. In all of these cases, keys had been stored in or on the vehicle. This is a good reminder that keys should not be left with your vehicle. Thieves know to look in many common places, and as sneaky as you think you might be with hiding a set of spare keys in your vehicle, the person stealing your car has likely stolen many other vehicles before, and knows all the usual hiding places:

A 2-door grey 2013 Ford F-150 was stolen from Copper Place during the night of October 6. The keys had been left in the truck, which had a silver toolbox in the back;
A grey Audi A4 was stolen from Hawthorne Avenue on the evening of October 1. The owner had left it running while she took groceries into her house. The vehicle was located parked elsewhere in Mission on October 3;
In the early morning hours of October 2, a white Ford Terra Transit was also stolen from Hawthorne Avenue. The vehicle’s keys had also been left with the vehicle. Fortunately, the vehicle had GPS, which helped police in Abbotsford to recover it;
A white 2010 Ford F-150 was stolen from Dyke Road in Dewdney on the morning of October 2, while the owner was out for a walk nearby. The vehicle had an emergency lockbox on it, containing a spare set of keys.

On October 8, a man reported that his iPhone had been stolen, and that he was able to use an app to determine the current location of the phone. An officer went to the residence where the phone was mapping, and a resident at the house turned it over. Mission RCMP regularly receive requests from owners of stolen phones to attend a location to retrieve a phone. Although location mapping can be a useful feature, and Mission RCMP will certainly look into any investigative avenues available, it is important to know that simply having an app showing your phone is in a specific location does not give police authority to just walk into a home to retrieve it. An officer will speak with you to determine the particulars of your case, and will then assess ways of trying to retrieve the property.

On the evening of October 8, Mission RCMP attended a single-vehicle collision in the 43200 block of Lougheed Highway in Lake Errock. A 56-year-old male was identified as the driver, who fortunately only had minor injuries. He said that he swerved to avoid a squirrel, however officers became suspicious when they located open liquor inside the vehicle. The driver registered a Fail reading on a roadside screening device, and received a 90-day driving prohibition. The squirrel remained at the scene and was uninjured, however officers recommended that it wear brightly-coloured clothing and cross at a cross-walk next time. The squirrel thought that idea was nuts.

Photo of crashed car