Would you like to help police recover stolen vehicles? By joining a volunteer citizen's patrol in your community, you can make a real contribution in the fight against auto crime. Contact your local community police, they'll put you in touch with the right people. If you can't give up your time, donate an old laptop if you have one. It would be put to excellent use.
Constable Vello Kleeband was responsible for the creation of the Stolen Auto Recovery Program, in late 1993, while working as the police coordinator of the Vancouver Police Department Citizens' Crime Watch Patrol. In 2003, the BC Crime Prevention Association took on the role of providing Citizens' Crime Watch/Citizens on Patrol, crime prevention office staff and bylaw enforcement personnel, with stolen vehicle file information, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, via the Internet. Internet specialist Sebastian Majerski and Vello work together to maintain and monitor the computer system that makes the information accessible via the BCCPA/BCCPN website.
You join the Stolen Auto Recovery Program as a Citizen's Crime Watch volunteer. About once a month you team up with a partner for 6-hour evening street patrol. Equipped with radios and portable computers, your team records licence plate numbers of parked and moving vehicles. If your input matches the plate number of a vehicle listed on a B.C. "hot sheet" of stolen autos, you keep an eye on the suspect auto and alert the police about your finding.
Each year in communities around B.C., Citizen's Crime Watch volunteers help to recover hundreds of stolen vehicles.
Citizen's Crime Watch members must:
Here's how citizen volunteers with the Stolen Auto Recovery Program spend a typical evening on patrol.
