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Volunteer Accomplishment

"A Sense of Accomplishment"

On January 17 2008, James and I, foot patrol volunteers at the South Vancouver Community Policing Centre, were on routine foot patrol in the area of 7100 Victoria Drive. A part of our patrol duties is to check for stolen vehicles. A tool we use for this is a PDA (a small electronic device that fits in the palm of your hand) which is provided to us at the beginning of each shift.

Our PDA's are supplied by ICBC as a part of their stolen auto recovery initiative. These PDA's are regularly uploaded with license plates of reported stolen vehicles. Our volunteers, while on patrol, enter license plate numbers in to the PDA's. If a hit occurs on the PDA, our volunteers will notify the Vancouver Police who attend and recoer the stolen vehicle.

On this foot patrol shift, I remember telling James that I have never recovered a stolen vehicle since starting the South Vancouver CPC Foot Patrol Program. Shortly after making this statement we checked an older model brown Chevy truck on East 55th near Victoria. The truck was dirty, exterior slightly scratched and glove compartment was open. We entered the license plate number into the PDA, and to our amazement and thrill it came back as a positive hit. We immediately called the Vancouver Police non emergency number 604-717-3321 and reported the stolen truck. We were provided with a police file number and a police member attended to conduct an investigation into the recovery of the stolen vehicle. We returned to the office where we wrote up a report on this incident.

Recovering a stolen vehicle was exciting and a great thrill. I truly felt that I had given something back to the community and it was also an interesting and unique experience as well. In addition, James and I felt that we had helped the South Vancouver CPC with its mandate of detecting/preventing crime in our community. As if this feeling of accomplishment wasn't enough, we were also rewarded with coupons for a free McDonald's Big Mac and free slurpees from 7-11, which were generously donated to us by these two organizations.

~ Edmond


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