Update: Saturday, 8:57 p.m. An Albemarle County government spokesperson has gotten back to us with information on what happened in Waynesboro earlier this week.
“I can confirm that two County vehicles were broken into. Some police equipment was taken — gas mask, ammunition, a police vest, and a rifle. No automatic weapons, laptops, or police reports were involved. In fact, ACPD does not have automatic weapons. Most of the property has been recovered, with one item still being tracked. We have an active investigation underway.
“There is no elevated threat to the community.”
First report: Saturday, 7:36 p.m. The odd story about Waynesboro Police appearing to want to downplay a story about a rash of vehicle break-ins in the city from earlier this week is taking an odder turn.
We’ve reached out to the Waynesboro PD and to officials in Albemarle County government about a tip that we received on Friday evening alleging that “the real reason this is being covered up by the Waynesboro Police Department is because over a dozen Albemarle County Police vehicles were broken into (at) the officers’ homes.
“Multiple unsecured full auto M16 rifles, loaded magazines, tactical gear, toughbook computers, and police reports with private information were stolen. There is currently panic behind the scenes to recover these items before word gets out,” the tipster told us.
This seems like something out of a straight-to-streaming action movie, but we still wanted to check it out, so I shared the full contents of this reader news tip with both the Waynesboro Police Department and the Albemarle County Police Department, hoping, honestly, that one or the other, or both, would quickly debunk it.
ICYMI
The first response on this came in on Saturday morning from the Waynesboro Police Department:
“We are currently working several larceny from vehicle investigations that are still active at this time.”
I replied back to the contact at the Waynesboro PD to note that this didn’t really answer my question about whether or not the investigation involved Albemarle County Police vehicles, and to request a follow-up response.
That response:
“Since this is still an active investigation, we don’t have any more that we can release at this time.”
Note here that the answer from the Waynesboro PD wasn’t:
No, this doesn’t involve police vehicles from Albemarle County, your tip person is barking up the wrong tree there.
As it turns out, the public information officer for the Albemarle County Police Department is on vacation, so I reached out to the county government communications office on Saturday to ask that somewhere there look into this for me, to either debunk or verify the information in the tip that we’d received.
The response to that request:
“I can work on this request on Monday. The on-call PIO and phone is for emergent and active incidents. Talk again on Monday once we have the staff available to look into this request.”
I don’t think that works.
The news tip alleges that police vehicles from Albemarle County parked in Waynesboro were broken into, and that among the items stolen were “full auto M16 rifles, loaded magazines, tactical gear.”
Based on the limited information that we had for our first report on whatever happened, there would have been at least seven vehicles that were broken into.
Our report was based on a Ring alert about “multiple larcenies from vehicles and stolen vehicles” reported over a 35-hour period beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday.
The reports came in from West Main Street, South Linden Avenue, South Poplar Avenue, South Magnolia Avenue, Windigrove Drive, Gray Drive and Paige Street, according to the Ring alert, which went out around 4 p.m. Thursday.
One stolen vehicle had been recovered as of when the alert went out, though a second stolen vehicle – a black 2023 Mitsubishi Outlander, tag: TJN-1150 – was still out there, somewhere, at that time.
An anonymous poster in a Facebook group reported that a black Mitsubishi with that license plate number was stolen from a residence in the Pratts Run subdivision in Waynesboro between 3:24 a.m. and 3:27 a.m. on Thursday.
Based on the time frame from the Ring alert, this would have been one of the final thefts in the crime spree, if not the actual fine one.
This is why I have no hair.
We’re just supposed to wait until Monday to find out if a thief or group of thieves got their hands on police-issue “full auto M16 rifles, loaded magazines, tactical gear”?
I feel like I’m over a barrel here, but obviously, I’m deciding to fall down on the side of, this feels like pretty damn important information to just sit on for a couple of days.
If we sat on this like it seems the official types are, and something tragic were to happen in the meantime, we’d be as much a part of the problem as everybody else.
It’s plain weird to me that local law enforcement isn’t asking for people who might have information on these incidents to share what they know.
In any case, if you know what is going on here, call the Waynesboro Police Department at 540-942-6675, or call Crime Stoppers at 800-322-2017.
I hope we end up finding out this was just a bunch of goofy kids rifling through non-police cars for whatever they could find, and not the other extreme, as expressed in the tip that we got last night, and haven’t been able to rule out, as much as we want to rule it out.
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Chris Graham
