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Theft is Cache Valley's most common crime, police chief
says
By Lexie Kite
April 19, 2005 | Burglary and identity
thefts are on the rise in Cache Valley, North Park Police
Chief Kim Hawkes said Friday.
"With our steady population increase, we see an equally
steady increase in property crimes," he said. Property
crimes most directly include theft of personal property
on personal property, he said.
"We havent had a dramatic increase in the sporadic
crimes all police departments have to deal with like
rapes and kidnappings," he said. "Our most consistent
crimes deal with property thefts."
He said the department has had consistent reports
of theft to storage sheds throughout the community.
The reports deal with people either not locking their
sheds or not checking in on their property regularly.
"I ran a report last weekend where a storage shed
had been broken into and burglarized, but the owners
didn't know when it happened because they hadn't checked
the storage unit since November," he said.
North Park Police Department encourages storage shed
renters to check their property on no less than a monthly
basis to determine things are in their proper order.
Other common crimes in Cache Valley include an average
of 24 stolen bikes every year, and the majority of the
thefts are never reported to police, he said. "We recover
several stolen bikes every year that sit at the station
until we end up donating them," he said. "We encourage
people to report the crime so their bike can be returned
to them."
Hawkes said one of the most dangerous new crime trends
in the area is identity theft through stolen financial
records, personal information and credit cards.
"In the last week we've had two reports of identity
theft in the valley," he said.
The crimes dealt with social security numbers and
credit reports being stolen and used to gain more information
on the victims, which Hawkes said is a common form of
identity theft.
"The biggest thing is to be careful in reference to
financial transactions and keeping track of personal
property."
He said identity theft could potentially be an area
of major concern for the police department and area
residents.
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