Tuesday, November 26, 2013

'Hot' Vodka Leaves Cyclist Cooling His Heels in Jail

On November 5th, 2013, two VicPD officers attended to a local liquor retailer in the area of Fort Street and Foul Bay Road for a theft complaint.

Once they arrived they learned that a second theft had occurred between the first complaint and their subsequent arrival.

The retailer had an excellent digital imaging system and the officers watched both thefts and made notes of the suspects descriptions.

The second of the two thefts involved a male who had his right pant leg partially rolled up. In policing we call that a clue and the officers formed the opinion that he was likely a cyclist. He selected two rather expensive bottles of Vodka and left the store.

Less than an hour later those same members were in the area of Cook and Haultain streets searching for a male who had been seen trying the door handles of parked cars as he walked along. It was dark by this time and the officers were checking to see if any vehicles had been entered when their attention was drawn to a cyclist riding without lights or helmet.

Both officers immediately recognized the male as the Vodka thief from earlier.


The suspect was stopped and arrested. Both 1.75 L bottles of Vodka were gone but, in exchange, he had a quantity of methamphetamine in his possession.

Monday, November 18, 2013

Undead Alarm System No Match for Multi-Tool Wielding Cop

On November the  5th, 2013, a resident of Vic West found herself at wits end in her attempts to deal with an unruly home alarm system.

She had been living in her home for ten years and had never had much thought of the alarm the previous owners had installed. As far as she knew it wasn't even hooked up.

That was until she started her home renovations. As a result of some electrical work the alarm decided to come back to life late in the evening when she opened up her sliding patio door to let her dog out. As the alarm siren blared she fruitlessly attempted to stop it from waking her neighbours. She called the alarm company who had no record of her as a customer or even the previous owners account.

After a while the alarm stopped sounding and she decided to keep the doors and windows shut until she could deal with the situation in the morning. That was when she discovered the living room motion detector was also working, and the alarm went off again.

Without the appropriate security codes, there wasn't much the alarm company could do to help her and there was nothing she could do to deactivate the alarm. She tried disconnecting the battery but, ten years ago, the alarm company had installed a hard wired backup to prevent such tampering from fooling the system and the alarm continued blast.

It’s at times like this that people realize there’s not much help out there and one of the few organizations you can call for help is the police.

So, armed with absolutely no electrical knowledge what-so-ever, a police officer was sent to assist.

When the officer arrived and entered the home, the alarm went off again.

He tried several rudimentary technical solutions which failed and he quickly determined that force was required.


Deploying his duty belt mounted multi-tool, and bringing to bare no less than three attachments, the offending siren was left silent and compliant upon the laundry room floor.