News Coverage

Bait Cars were everywhere during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.   

The Olympic transportation plan called for everyone to get out of their vehicles and take transit or official Olympic buses to the various competition venues.  This meant that Park & Rides, West Coast Express lots and Olympic Departure Hubs would be jammed with vehicles belonging to spectators, workers and volunteers.  Unfortunately, we knew that where there are cars, there are auto crime thieves. 

To combat this potential problem, the Integrated Municipal Provincial Auto Crime Team (IMPACT) planted Bait Cars in and around all of these parking lots.  To catch thieves who like to break into cars we also planted enticing property in the Bait Cars and the property was marked with MicroDotDNA marking technology.  These tiny dots are almost invisible to the naked eye and contain a special serial number that will positively identify the property as belonging to the police. 

Just prior to the Olympics, we held a press conference to warn car thieves that we would be planting Bait Cars with marked property in and around all these parking lots.  They seemed to have received the message as auto crime was almost non-existent during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.  We still did, however, manage to catch two people stealing a Bait Car and two others trying to steal property out of Bait Cars. 

We invite you to watch this sample of media coverage of our press conference.

Sorry but I have more bad news for car thieves.  IMPACT’s entire fleet of Bait Cars (did I mention that we have the largest Bait Car fleet in North America) is now armed with live streaming video so we can watch you and listen to everything that you are saying in real time. 

It doesn’t matter if you are trying to steal the Bait Car or if you are trying to steal some enticing property that the police planted in the Bait Car.  We will now instantly know who you are, what you look like and what you may be discussing with your partners in crime. 

Oh ya, just one more thing.  Did I mention that all of this happens just before the police dog drags you out of the car and we slap on the handcuffs? 

If you want to learn more, I invite you to watch the media coverage of the launch of this great new technology. 

Steal a Bait Car, Go to Jail.

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