People make it too easy for car thieves, say police

Police are suggesting a solution to help reduce the increase in the number of vehicles stolen in Lethbridge: Simply don’t hide your keys inside your car and don’t leave it running unattended.

There has been a significant increase in thefts locally with police reporting 319 vehicles stolen in 2017, up from 172 in 2016. In the first two months of 2018 police report a total of 74 stolen vehicles.

Vehicle thefts are often a crime of opportunity, says Insp. Tom Ascroft.

“Most of this is people stealing cars to go from A to B because the car was running in front of them.”

Police say thefts aren’t happening because criminals are defeating locking mechanisms or hot-wiring the vehicle to start.

“Hiding keys doesn’t work. Everybody knows where people hide their keys,” said Ascroft.

No specific type of vehicle is more prone to this type of theft and no particular area of the city is worse than another, says Ascroft.

“It’s everywhere. It’s wherever someone chooses to leave their car with the keys in it.”

While leaving a vehicle running to warm up is a common practice in winter, the danger isn’t limited to just one season.

“Year-round, it’s a big deal because you’ll find people leaving their vehicles running with the air-conditioning on, too,” said Ascroft.

“It’s a huge drain on police resources,” said Ascroft, pointing out stolen vehicles are used in other types of crime as well.

Police don’t currently use socalled “bait cars” to catch thieves, but Ascroft says it is a strategy they have employed and could do again.

In January alone, 27 vehicles were stolen in the city, however, all but four were recovered and 17 charges were laid.

“This is probably the most cost effective, logical strategy that we could come up with to reduce our vehicle thefts is just ask people to not leave the keys in them,” said Ascroft