BY RATTAN MALL

FOLLOWING seven break-and-enters between November 5 and 16 in homes in the Blueridge Drive and Townline Road area of Abbotsford with mostly South Asian victims, Abbotsford Police are advising the community not to keep large sums of cash and jewellery at home.

Abbotsford Police Constable Ian MacDonald told The VOICE on Thursday: “It’s probably over $100,000 in break-and-enters in an 11-day period all in the same neighbourhood.”

On Saturday, November 8, a home on Heritage Drive was broken into in the late afternoon. The thieves gained access through a rear window and took Canadian and foreign currency, jewelry and electronics from the home. The total value of the loss is in excess of $50,000.

Between November 5 and 16, there have been six other daytime / afternoon break-and-enters in the same area. In every case, cash, jewelry and electronics were targeted.

MacDonald said that in three of the seven cases, the family had over $10,000 in cash along with jewellery in the house.

He pointed out to me: “All of those seven break-and-enters took place between 3 and 7 p.m. and that’s weird as well because three o’clock is normally when kids start coming home from school and between 3 and 7 p.m. is when most families return home from work, etc. So there is an element of this that looks like that the suspects would have targeted and probably done some surveillance or reconnaissance work on the homes to know that nobody would be there.”

MacDonald added: “If you go and break into a house and you are walking away with between $10,000 and 15,000 cash, you are getting more money than if you did a bank robbery. Modern-day bank robbers get a few hundred dollars. … It’s a limited amount of cash from the till and then they are on their way.”

Residents are being encouraged to report suspicious activity to police and to safeguard their valuables.

Anyone with information about these incidents is asked to call the APD at 604-859-5225 or text us at 222973 (abbypd) or call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.