Cochrane Mounties are warning motorists to lock their vehicles after a recent increase in thefts.
Items stolen from vehicles have been reported in several neighbourhoods over the past two weeks, according to RCMP.
"It only takes one or two offenders to do a great deal of crime," said Cpl. Troy Savinkoff. "They'll hit multiple vehicles and victimize many people."
Cpl. Savinkoff said the RCMP know there is a group of thieves currently active in the area, though whether they are local or perhaps from the city, remains to be seen.
"We live next to a city of a million people, so quite often, they'll come into our communities, or they'll steal a car and come into our communities, commit a bunch of crime and then go back to Calgary," he said, citing instances the Cochrane RCMP has investigated in the past.
Based on observations made by Mounties, the thieves are not targeting specific neighbourhoods or items, they seek to take advantage of easy targets - unlocked vehicles.
"What these offenders do is extremely straightforward," said Savinkoff. "They'll walk down the streets, maybe with a vehicle trailing behind, and they'll just try every single door. The moment they find one that's unlocked, they'll go in and just take whatever they think could be of value."
Though these offenders appear to be looking for easy targets, leaving a valuable item in plain sight is unwise even if its inside a locked vehicle, especially during the holiday shopping season.
Savinkoff likens the response of securing and hiding one’s valuables to inhibit crime, to putting away garbage and other attractants to keep wildlife out of our communities.
"In similar terms, if we lock our doors and [criminals] come to our community, they'll find that most people in Cochrane lock their doors and that reduces the attraction for them," he said.
Theft of motor vehicles also tends to increase as temperatures drop, and Savinkoff said the Cochrane RCMP crime reduction unit proactively did foot patrols last year to look for such offenders.
While they were doing foot patrols at night, checking vehicle security and leaving educational pamphlets, Savinkoffsaid they noticed more residents were still awake at the hour of their patrols than they expected.
With that observation in mind, he suggested that folks safely keep an eye out for suspicious activity in the late hours.
"Whether it was mothers up in the middle of the night with their babies, or fathers up with their babies, or people out on their front porches having a cigarette at night," he said. "Even in the middle of the night, there was a fairly decent public presence out there.
"So, if anybody sees suspicious behaviour, which might be somebody on foot with a car following closely behind, or people with backpacks that are acting suspicious while walking down the street, especially given the time of night - these are suspicious occurrences that we'd really like to encourage people to call the police about."
Don't approach them, yell or say anything to them, Savinkoff urged, for both the public's safety and to increase the chances that the RCMP will catch them.
"The strategy would be to quietly call police immediately," he said. "We will have a strategy on how we're going to approach that subdivision to increase our chances to, number one, locate these individuals, and number two, once we locate them, have a strategy on how we're going to be able to catch them and take them into custody."
Mounties are asking the public's assistance for any information in relation to these incidents, including identifying those responsible. Please contact Cochrane RCMP at 403-870-3749 or your local police.
If you wish to remain anonymous, you can contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or online at P3Tips.com or by using the "P3 Tips" app available through the Apple App or Google Play Store.
