Two car prowlers were arrested March 19 after breaking into three vehicles in the Highlands neighborhood in Mill Creek after a citizen called police to report suspicious activity.
The arrests are a feather in the cap of Mill Creek Police.
“It is rare to catch a car prowler,” said Becky Erk, public information officer for Mill Creek Police Department. “Very rare.”
The call came into police early in the morning on March 19. A Mill Creek resident described a vehicle with three young men in it driving around the neighborhood. Mill Creek police officer Jerry Dawson responded to the call. He saw a vehicle driving around the neighborhood at about 2 a.m. that fit the description of the suspect vehicle, so he had probable cause to stop the drivers, Erk said.
He asked the young men in the vehicle what they were doing, and they said they were “looking for a friend’s house,” Erk said.
She said that answer is a stereotypical response that comes from car prowlers. With further questioning, Dawson found that the young men had very little information about their “friend.” That lack of information, plus the description from the 911 caller, gave him cause to search the vehicle, Erk said.
In a search of the vehicle, Dawson found the stereo and CDs that were allegedly stolen from residents that night.
At that point, Erk said, “they confessed that they had” stolen the items. Two of the men were arrested and charged with second degree theft. The third, a minor, was released to his parents. The police were able to photograph the stolen property for use as evidence so they could return it to its rightful owners, Erk said.
Car prowls are a frequent crime in Mill Creek. On average, the Mill Creek Police respond to about one vehicle prowl every other day, Erk said. Those numerous prowls often go unsolved because police have no leads to go on in order to catch the thieves, Erk said.
“Usually people will wait until they get to work (hours later) and will call” to say they saw someone behaving suspiciously near a vehicle, or they thought they saw someone breaking into a vehicle earlier that morning, Erk said.
They often call the police during business hours and say they didn’t call earlier because they “didn’t want to bother us,” Erk said. Her advice to those who think that way is, “bother us,” she said. Law enforcement officers and 911 dispatchers are at work 24 hours just for that purpose, she said. When calls don’t come in until hours later, police are usually unable to use the information to catch the suspects, who are, by then, long gone.
On March 19, however, things worked much differently from usual. A Mill Creek man called 911 and gave police a description of a vehicle, which gave Dawson probable cause to pull the vehicle over, question the suspects, and search the vehicle, Erk said.
That 911 call led to the arrests, Erk said. Those arrests likely prevented more car prowls that night, and after, because if they had gotten away with it they likely would have done it again, she said.
Dawson, the arresting officer, was off for two days and was unavailable for comment.
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