Every now and then, I get an email from an RCMP detachment somewhere in the province that makes me stop and wonder what people are thinking. Last week, that email came from Surrey, and announced the arrest of the “surgical mask bandit.”
This bandit, White Rock’s Travis Jensen-Pickford, 23, committed 12 armed robberies in just over a month between mid-May and mid-June. In each robbery, Jensen-Pickford disguised his face, sometimes with the traditional bandana, and sometimes with a surgical mask. The germaphobe-looking bandit would approach victims as they withdrew money from an ATM.
Police everywhere deal with a healthy dose of bizarre crimes, but another one from the end of March in Surrey is probably one responding officers won’t soon forget.
A man reportedly went into a shop yelling, then took a jug of milk, went into the parking lot, and dumped the milk all over himself. And that’s not even where the weirdness ends.
Police determined he was high, had been pepper sprayed, and had also been shot in the leg.
Back to strange choices for facial disguises: a 41-year-old Brit was sentenced to two years in jail last week for robbing a gas station in Cornwall, U.K. in 2012 wearing a clear plastic bag over his head.
I suppose he didn’t realize that the people he was robbing could see through the bag about as well as he could see out of it.
The man also tried to pass off his cellphone as a gun, but the jig was up when the phone rang during the robbery attempt.
In France, a would-be bank robber attempted to disguise himself by wearing underwear on his head. The attempted burglary was thwarted by a teller who recognized the man despite his creative application of underpants. He was sentenced to eight months in prison.
In Melbourne, Australia earlier this year, an underwear-masked thief was successful in his robbery of a service station. Maybe his underwear mask was a more modest make of thicker cotton than his French counterpart’s.
Though there are elements of humour in the what-were-they-thinking antics of these criminals, all of these crimes are serious in nature and victimize others. While I haven’t heard of any underwear-masked bandits in Merritt, the seemingly endless reports of thefts mean many of the people living here are victims of crime. Crime may happen anywhere at any given time, but that doesn’t mean we have to be quiet victims of it.
A new Facebook group called the Merritt Neighbourhood Watch encourages members to post about crime and suspicious activity in and around Merritt.
Not only could this group help people recover their stolen property, it encourages them and their neighbours to be actively involved in crime prevention. The more aware people are of what to look for when it comes to crime, the more effective we are at policing our own communities. This doesn’t just help ourselves, it helps our neighbours and our RCMP, too.
This Facebook page is one way people can help prevent crimes in their own backyards.
Merritt’s Community Policing Office offers volunteers the chance to be part of crime reduction and prevention programs that are flexible based on the amount of time you might have to give to the cause. Foot patrols, citizens on patrol, speed watch and block watch volunteers act as the eyes and ears of the RCMP and give members of the public the chance to relay the first-hand information they might have as well as stay actively involved in community initiatives that promote a healthy city.
Proactive behaviour is the key to crime prevention, and increasing the visibility of informed and active citizens benefits the whole community.
