Police dogs play an important role in our quest to catch criminals. The police know from interviewing arrested car thieves that police dogs are their #1 fear because getting chewed by a dog is not a lot of fun. As a matter of fact, when car thieves are stopped in a stolen vehicle, they often beg the police to hold back the dog so they won’t get chewed.

Police dogs have five common senses that can be placed in order of importance:

• Smell
• Hearing
• Sight
• Touch
• Taste

If anybody out there wants to be involved in auto theft, I invite you to watch this live video demonstration involving a dog taking down a car thief. This demo was filmed at our Auto Crime Enforcement Month in February 2007.

Remember, steal a car, get chewed!!

The IMPACT Bait Car Program celebrated its 3rd anniversary by hosting a media event where Solicitor General John Les announced some impressive statistics and information.

The program was launched in the Spring of 2004 and has now grown into the largest Bait Car program in North America. Supported by award-winning advertising campaigns from ICBC, auto thieves are now well aware that "Bait Cars are Everywhere - Steal a Bait Car - Go to Jail".

Since the inception of the Bait Car Program some three years ago, auto theft in British Columbia has dropped a whopping 35% and we believe that Bait Cars have been the catalyst for the impressive decreases.

Stolen Lives is a gritty made-in-BC documentary film aimed at auto theft prevention that combines dramatic police video footage with the personal stories of car thieves and their victims.

After four years of production this film is now touring high schools across BC along with a companion discussion guide designed to get youth thinking and talking about the issue of auto theft and its link to drug use. Stolen Lives shifts auto crime education away from its traditional focus on car owners and onto the perpetrators, the majority of whom began sealing cars as teenagers. The primary purpose of the film is to save lives by showing young people the real and tragic consequences of stealing cars.

The film has been officially endorsed by the BC Ministry of Education and has been distributed to every high school in the province for viewing at the grade nine through twelve level.

Anyone interested in ordering a copy of the video can go to www.oddsquad.com

The Integrated Municipal Auto Crime Team (IMPACT) launched its Bait Car Program into Williams Lake to help combat and auto theft epidemic in that community.

British Columbia as a whole has enjoyed a 35% decrease in auto theft since 2004 but Williams Lake was clearly bucking the trend. Auto theft in the small community of about 12,000 people experienced 74 stolen vehicles in the month of August 2007 which represented a 350% increase over the same month from the previous year.

To tackle the problem IMPACT quietly sent up several bait cars and the local RCMP began to plant them strategically throughout the city. It didn’t take long before two suspects were caught on audio and video stealing a bait car and IMPACT went up to Williams lake to warn local car thieves that ‘Bait Cars Are Everywhere – Steal One, Go to Jail’.

Television coverage of the news conference can be seen above.

In response to a 17% increase in auto theft and an 88% increase in thefts from vehicles, the Integrated Municipal Auto Crime Team (IMPACT) quietly slipped into Prince George this past July and brought with them all of the tools and technology at their disposal. The rising statistics combined with huge auto theft numbers the previous summer prompted the covert auto crime campaign. One could call it a preemptive strike.

IMPACT sent up their entire undercover enforcement team, extra bait vehicles, bait recreational vehicles and Automatic Licence Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology. They also had local Prince George RCMP members, police helicopters, planes and dogs working with them.

The campaign concluded with a strong message from Solicitor General John Les who held a news conference to announce that IMPACT is an integrated provincial unit that is mobile and will move its resources wherever needed. A video of the news coverage is above.