Tips to make sure your vehicle is not a target for “prolific offenders”

I currently chair Langley City’s Crime Prevention Task Group. One of the major goals of the task group is to provide education to both residents and business owners in our community about how they can help reduce the types of crime we see in our community. While Langley City is a safe community, we have a large amount of people stealing items from vehicles, and stealing vehicles. The people committing these crimes are a small number of what the RCMP calls “prolific offenders.”

While the RCMP works to catch these “prolific offenders”, they also provided our task group with a winter safety sense guide to share with others. This guide provides tips on how to help reduce these kinds of crime.

Below is some excerpts from the guide.

When parking your vehicle:

• Never leave a wallet or purse in your vehicle
• Look around your vehicle and see what items you’ve left in plain sight. Things that don’t appear temping to you, could be attractive to a thief. Items can include clothing, food, and loose change.
• Report any suspicious activity around vehicles to the RCMP
• Chose well-lit areas to park your vehicle. Park if possible in areas near high foot traffic.
• Always close windows and lock doors
• Use an anti-theft device
• Keep your spare keys in your wallet, not in your car

When shopping:

• See if a shop or mall has lockers to store purchases until you are finished shopping
• Do not lock your purchases in your vehicle or in your vehicle’s trunk. Thieves often target parking lots watching for people to place items in their vehicle, and then leave their vehicle unattended.

At home:

• Light your driveway all night
• After opening your garage door or strata parking gate, watch out for thieves waiting to slip inside. Wait for the door or gate to close behind you.
• If you see any suspicious activity around your parking area, call the RCMP

The Non-Emergency Line for the Langley RCMP is 604-532-3200.