Police in Yellowknife have urged residents to lock their cars and keep valuables hidden away when vehicles are parked.
“Officers routinely respond to reports of residents having their vehicles rummaged through across all areas of the city and many of these instances could be preventable,” police said in a Tuesday press release.
“Leaving items such as purses, wallets phones and other electronics in a vehicle makes it an easy target for theft. Ensure your vehicle is locked before leaving it.”
Meanwhile, police said vehicles should not be left running with the keys inside “even if for a short time, as this makes vehicle theft only too easy to carry out.”
Car theft has traditionally been a rarity in Yellowknife. Any would-be thief trying to get a vehicle to a southern market has to drive it along the one road south for 350 km just to reach an intersection with highways connecting to Alberta and BC, then hundreds of kilometres more to actually cross the NWT border. Multiple RCMP detachments exist along the way.
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One Yellowknife resident reported this week that a vehicle had been taken from their property and driven as far as Enterprise before police recovered it. (That vehicle wasn’t left running but a key may have been inadvertently dropped nearby, the resident said in comments online.)
In general, police said, “small precautions” would help officers reduce vehicle crime and keep cars secure.
