CHENEY – People breaking into cars and stealing backpacks, wallets, and other belongings is nothing new in Cheney or anywhere else for that matter. However, Captain Nate Conley from the Cheney Police Department noted that it seems like the city is in the middle of a upswing of property crimes involving vehicle prowling. “We go through periods where we see increased spikes,” Conley said.
The cause of those spikes is hard to pin down but it usually comes down to a select group of individuals that choose to embark on a car prowling marathon across Cheney. “It’s a small enough town where one suspect or a couple of suspects working together can cover quite a bit of area any given night,” Conley said.
While it seems like there has been an above average amount of car related property crimes, it isn’t that out of the ordinary. Most of the cases of vehicle prowling occur because people leave their cars unlocked or leave valuables in their cars which makes many of these instance’s crimes of opportunity. A lot of car prowlers walk through neighborhoods at night and pull on door handles until one opens and then proceed to rummage through center consoles and glove boxes looking for anything valuable.
Conley doesn’t attribute this upswing to anything related to the COVID-19 pandemic or the lockdowns. While many cities have seen increases in property crimes over the past two years, Conley hasn’t seen enough evidence to make the same claims for Cheney. In general, crime waves like car prowling or vehicle theft happen because the area is being targeted. Maybe the individuals live in the area, or they live in the surrounding communities and are targeting Cheney until police pressure forces them rethink their approach.
According to Conley, it’s just hard to tell exactly what the cause is for these spikes. Sometimes it’s homegrown individuals targeting their own community and other times it’s suspects that live a transient lifestyle and Cheney just happened to be the next stop in their criminal journey.
This is a good time to remind everyone to not only lock your cars when you come home, but to take any and all valuables out of your car for the night. If you must leave stuff in your car, make sure it’s in the trunk or out of sight as to lower the instance of someone finding a quick score by smashing your window, snatch your backpack, and run off into the night while you’re sleeping.
CityRating.com reports that property crime rate in Cheney for 2022 is already trending down and it could end up being lower than it was in 2019. Cheney’s property crime rate in 2019 was almost 40 percent lower than the overall property crime rate for Washington state.
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