I Parked it Right Here!

The Daily Post's Police Blotter shows there were three cars stolen in Burlingame over the weekend:

  Friday 6:17am       100 block of Bloomfield

  Saturday 8:44am    2500 block of Adeline

  Saturday 10:16am  1600 block of Adrian

These cars sometimes get abandoned on the streets.  I know from personal experience that when you call the Abandoned Vehicle line (i.e. the non-emergency police number at 650 692-8440) if the car has been reported as stolen, the police will be there in a flash.

Comments

[Rod]

...and there was one stolen on the 600 block of Lexington about three weeks ago.

[Russ]

Seeing these two recent posts about car thefts got me thinking again of a suggestion I have made public in the past. The idea of volunteer patrols to augment the BPD. This is not a new idea. Many cities across the country have programs like this.

Nearby, Millbrae, Sacramento and others have volunteers be the eyes and ears of the PD. In other places like Sun City, AZ they only have volunteers. I am not suggesting we go that far of curse, but I do think this economy and the ultra tight Burlingame budget is a great reason to look into some sort of volunteer program.

Below is an article about the Portland, maine program that illustrates how a volunteer program could work.

A recent Friday night found Ed Libby heading out on patrol.

Libby, 65, isn't a police officer, but he improves Scarborough's police service by taking on some lower-priority public safety tasks and freeing officers for more serious work.

"It's fun. I just love doing it," said Libby, a Scarborough High School graduate who retired recently from Hannaford. "To get out there and ride around, you'd be surprised how many people you can help out."

Libby was one of Scarborough's first 11 Volunteers in Police Service when the program started three years ago.

The services the volunteers provide are important but often are tasks that departments can't spare officers to do, said Cumberland County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Kevin Joyce.

The VIPS program is being adopted by towns across the country as a way to expand the benefits of police work without adding officers.

Joyce met with chiefs from across the country who have used the program with great success. The chief in Colorado Springs, Colo., for instance, has 500 volunteers who do everything from interpreting foreign languages to filing to conducting inventories of helicopter parts.

Armed with radios to report illegal activity this holiday season, Scarborough's volunteers are keeping an eye out for purse snatchers and car burglars in the town's commercial parking lots.

They also enforce handicapped-parking restrictions. Initially, they just issued warnings to scofflaws. But after they saw several repeat offenders, they were given the power to write tickets.

"It's not just giving them something to do, it is meaningful," said Scarborough Police Chief Robert Moulton. "With the complement of folks we have out there doing actual patrol work, there's no way we could do those things."

Some instruct new parents on how to use children's car seats correctly, or promote bike helmet safety. The volunteers also help with traffic control at major events, and served hot chocolate and cookies at Halloween.

Standish is training its first group of five volunteers, who are expected to be on the job in January.

Joyce said he initially worried about the volunteers' safety and liability. But volunteers get training and are screened to ensure they understand the limits, as wells as benefits, of their work.

The jobs stop short of actual police work but make the officers more effective, he said.

In Standish, the volunteers will be the first point of contact in the town's program for older residents who have signed up to call the town dispatch center every morning. If they fail to call by 10 a.m., a volunteer will head out to check on them.

Joyce also envisions the volunteers placing a speed-display sign in areas of town where speeding is a problem. "Right now I have supervisors doing it," he said.
The effort in Standish got a big boost when a man whose elderly mother lives in town donated a four-wheel-drive vehicle to the VIPS program.

Moulton said he expected Scarborough's volunteers to be older, community-minded residents but found a healthy mix of older and younger people. Some, such as a emergency medical technicians, have public service backgrounds.