Police continue to find unattended vehicles during Operation Cold Start

Investigators say they found another 179 vehicles left running and unattended Monday morning as they continue their war on vehicle theft in the city.

It’s called Operation Cold Start, where police officers have been scouring the city looking for empty cars or trucks.

Vehicle theft has been on the rise in Calgary, it’s dramatically increased over the five year average and that has some like Sergeant Lon Brewster concerned.

“Cold Start’s an initiative that we started to check vehicles that have been left running,” he said. “It’s usually between the hours of 6 to 8 o’clock in the morning, they’ll just essentially look for vehicles that have been left running on the driveways, it’s cold, people want their vehicles to warm up so they just left them go. Unfortunately for us, it causes a lot of problems.”

Brewster is encouraging people to lock their vehicles with a second set of keys inside or to use the remote function on your vehicle.

“We’ve only been doing it for about 3 days total and in those days, we’ve got about 420 vehicles checked,” he said.

On Monday, they had 7 vehicles reported stolen, they also found one vehicle with a child that had been left unattended.

“We understand peoples’ desire to have to warm their vehicle up but unfortunately we see the same trend year in and year out, we’re trying to get the message out that although you want to have a warm vehicle, it sure is nice to have a vehicle when you go out to your car.”

Brewster says 4,200 vehicles have been stolen up until the end of September, which is about a 46 per cent increase on the 5 year trend.

“Whenever the weather gets colder, we always see more vehicles running in the driveways so we definitely see an uptick this time of year. For those two minutes that you go into a store, it’s just not worth leaving your vehicle running. The crime of opportunity is there and people will take advantage of it.”

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