Guelph police are seeing an increase in vehicle thefts and are urging drivers to take every precaution when parking their vehicles.
Since April, car thieves have stolen vehicles in Guelph 33 times where the thief simply used the car’s keys to get away.
Police said common mistakes by drivers include: leaving vehicles running, putting keys in another unlocked vehicle in the driveway or in unlocked garages, and leaving the keys themselves in unlocked garages. In some cases, the keys were left in a public locker.
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Const. Buzz Dean called it a “crime of opportunity.”
“We have to do what we can to minimize those opportunities,” Dean said. “It doesn’t seem like a big issue that we’d have to have this conversation, but it’s happening in our community.”
On Friday at 2:30 a.m., a 2017 Hyundai Santa Fe was left running while the driver went into a local coffee shop. When he came out, the vehicle was gone.
Within an hour the SUV was found abandoned, but this isn’t always the case.
“(There’s) eight or 10 incidents in the last month alone where police have attempted to, either approach or stop a suspected (stolen) motor vehicle and the driver simply accelerates away from police, and dodges in and out of traffic, and doesn’t show any regard for the public around them,” Dean explained.
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He said thieves know police will not pursue stolen vehicles if it puts the public at risk.
There have also been three incidents recently where officers avoided injury by dodging a stolen vehicle that’s being driven towards them.
A 24-year-old woman was struck and killed by a stolen vehicle that fled at a RIDE spot check in December 2015.
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“It’s like having a loaded gun,” Dean described. “I don’t think anyone would argue that the potential for someone in that mindset, whose only desire is to evade police and not to get arrested, is just not the same.”
Guelph police will be launching Project Century in the coming days in an effort to target the theft of vehicles and those who steal them.
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