The community’s assistance helped Ucluelet police make short work of a crime-spree investigation this week.
A man believed to have arrived in Ucluelet on Tuesday afternoon was arrested the next day in connection to multiple thefts from parked vehicles between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
The man was arrested in the downtown area around 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday and Sgt. Steve Mancini told the Westerly News that the majority of items that were reported stolen, including a camera, a wetsuit and roughly $1,200 cash, have been returned.
“I’m just happy that we were able to get everyone’s stuff back and thankful to the community for stepping up and helping us out by providing us with the information that ultimately led to the arrest of our person responsible,” Mancini said. “Once we get everybody’s belongings back, we’ll prepare a report to the Crown attorney requesting formal charges be laid against this individual.”
He said the investigation was assisted by surveillance footage from a local business that captured clear images of a man rummaging through vehicles.
“We received information to the detachment that gave us a place where we might want to start looking and we followed up with that and, sure enough, we were able to locate the person and went from there,” he said. “It was a combination of surveillance footage from local businesses, people reporting specific items [stolen] as well as just concerned locals with knowledge that was able to push us in the right direction.”
He said the suspect is not a local and is believed to have acted alone.
“He may have had somebody with him, but all evidence and all indication that we have is that it was one person that was going around and actually taking the items from the vehicles,” he said.
He added reports of stolen items and suspicious activity are invaluable to police and encourages anyone who sees anything out of the ordinary to reach out to the Ucluelet RCMP detachment at 250-726-7773.
“It’s huge. We need people to report. I know a lot of times people don’t want to bother us or they don’t want to call the police, but we were able to get the majority of the items back just based on the fact that it was reported,” he said. “We can’t be expected to solve crimes that we don’t know about. This was definitely a good example of, when stuff is reported and the community helps out, we can solve some of these matters pretty quickly and we were fortunate enough to get everybody’s stuff back.”