Motor vehicle thefts around Sundre and the surrounding area have gone up in 2015 compared to last year, the local RCMP detachment commander recently told council.
The vehicles stolen the most tend to be Ford F350 pickup trucks, said Sgt. Jim Lank during council's Nov. 23 meeting.
“They're easy to steal, basically.”
Police have also been recovering a lot of vehicles stolen in other places and then abandoned in this area as well as in the West Country, he said during a presentation detailing the department's activities over the past year.
“We still continue to have a lot of vehicle thefts and theft of property from vehicles,” said Lank.
The golden rules are to lock vehicles and park inside if possible, and to not leave any valuables in the vehicle or to at least ensure nothing of interest to a potential thief is visible from the outside, he said.
“Typically what happens is criminals will just case out vehicle after vehicle, and they typically will not break into a vehicle if the next one is unlocked. They want to be covert about it — keep the heat away — they don't want people to see or hear what they're doing. So they're likely not going to break into a vehicle if they can simply find vehicles that are unlocked.”
Keeping vehicles locked without any spare sets of keys inside and removing valuables or at least ensuring they're not visible from the outside will prevent the majority of thefts from happening because thieves take the easiest targets, he said.
