Summary
Weekly crime trend update & prevention recommendations from the West Vancouver Police Block Watch Program Coordinator.
West Vancouver Police have responded to 283 calls for service since our last update.
**Click Here For Updated Block Watch Crime Alerts At WestVanPolice.ca**
Residential Break-ins
Watchful neighbours helped alert West Vancouver Police to a break-in this past week at an upper Ambleside area home where owners were away. Neighbours called police after noting window damage on an upper floor. Attending officers discovered thieves had climbed to a 2nd floor balcony and smashed through a door to the primary bedroom. Several rooms were targeted.
Thieves are regularly targeting upper floors of homes, in the hope that alarm intrusion sensors are not installed there. These break-ins are not focused in any area of the district. Please be watchful in your neighbourhood for any suspicious persons or activity, particularly if you are aware that a neighbour is away. If you are going away, please ensure your home is well secured before departure.
Ensure you do not have unsecured ladders, other equipment, trees, or other natural features close to your home that could be used by suspects to access upper floors. If you have an alarm or surveillance system, we strongly encourage you to review whether intrusion sensors on upper floors will help better secure your home.
Please be watchful in all neighbourhoods and promptly call police if any suspicious persons or circumstances are noted.
Welcome To Our New Internet Home
West Vancouver Block Watch has now moved back to the new & upgraded West Vancouver Police website WestVanPolice.ca. Our upgraded site offers improved ease of navigation around the website, more direct availability of Online Reporting for non-urgent matters & significantly upgraded translation features.
For Block Watch participants, we retain all the functionality of our previous individual West Vancouver Block Watch website, with important upgrades in features that can directly support Block Watch participants. You can directly visit our page at westvanpolice.ca/block-watch then look for the ‘Block Watch Menu’ button at the top right of the page for links to our program information. We welcome any feedback you have!
For updated crime alerts between our weekly updates click westvanpolice.ca/crime-alerts.
Supporting New Block Watch Members
For Captains & Co-Captains working to engage new participants in our program, anyone seeking information about Block Watch can click westvanpolice.ca/get-involved.
Translation
Significantly enhanced translation capabilities on our new web page can help you share information about Block Watch with new neighbours whose understanding of our program could be better supported with information in their language of origin.
When you are visiting any page on our new website, translation of that of that page from English to 22 other languages is now a mouse click away.
Look for the white drop-down box at the top right of the page (see image at left), click on it to open the list, and select and click on the language of choice.
Impaired Driving Honour
Mother’s Against Drunk Driving (MADD) recently awarded West Vancouver Police for taking the most impaired drivers off the road per capita in the Lower Mainland region in 2022. Traffic Services officers Constable Bryce Wilkinson and Constable Brock Harrington were responsible for almost half of our impaired driving enforcement. We are especially grateful to citizens who assist in our work, by promptly reporting suspected impaired drivers to police!
If you see activity of concern, please don’t hesitate to call West Vancouver Police. Call 604-925-7300 for non-emergency matters. Call 9-1-1 in an emergency, including events that involve an immediate threat to a person or property or to report a substantive crime in progress.
Jeff Palmer
Block Watch & Operational Support Coordinator
t: 604-925-7363
