Several vehicles in Waynesboro, including at least two belonging to officers with the Albemarle County Police Department, were broken into over a three-day period last week, and still, nothing on this from the Waynesboro Police Department.
I reached out to the public information officer with the city PD on Friday morning to ask for an update on the break-ins story; not even a response back, which is not surprising, given that our police force only seemed to accidentally let word of the break-ins get out into the public domain in the first place.
The bass-ackwards way that we found out about the break-ins was, one of our staffers is signed up, some time ago, for Ring alerts, and got a Ring alert about this one, and forwarded it to me, so that I could try to track it down.
ICYMI
- Waynesboro: Why is the PD keeping a local crime spree on the down low?
- Is the Waynesboro vehicle break-in story that we reported something bigger?
- Waynesboro Police still mum on vehicle break-ins: Protecting the shield?
Because we went on to write about the break-ins, we got a news tip from a reader about there being something to do with this with Albemarle County Police.
The tip seems to have overstated the extent – the report that we got was that “over a dozen Albemarle County Police vehicles were broken into (at) the officers’ homes,” and that “(m)ultiple unsecured full auto M16 rifles, loaded magazines, tactical gear, toughbook computers, and police reports with private information were stolen.”
At least officially, “over a dozen” is actually just “two,” and the county government official who got back to us on the news denies that police reports or computers were taken.
To that point: I asked police in Waynesboro and Albemarle County multiple times over a two-day period last week to address the tip, which I gave them in full, and no one at either PD debunked the original report – that only came after I initiated a back-and-forth with the county government’s executive leadership team, which took a while to get me the answer, but eventually did, and thanks to them for doing that.
In the county’s defense, the crimes didn’t happen in their jurisdiction; the Waynesboro folks are the ones who dropped the ball here, and are continuing to do so.
So, all we know with this story is that, as of a week ago, the list of items taken from the ACPD vehicles broken into in Waynesboro included a police rifle, ammunition and a police vest.
I once got to shoot with a .223 rifle at a citizens police academy; the idea that one of those bad boys is floating around in the hands of whatever goon or goons was pilfering through people’s cars this week isn’t a good one.
The idea that at least one ACPD officer living here in Waynesboro left a rifle, ammunition and a vest in a police cruiser parked on the street isn’t a good one, either.
Is that why the Waynesboro PD kept the break-in news on the down low?
To protect the shield?
What about those of us out here who pay your salaries?
Something is going on here – either just plain incompetence, on the part of our police department, or they’re actively covering things up, so as not to make the ACPD look bad.
Occam’s razor – the principle telling us that, when faced with competing explanations for the same phenomenon, you should prefer the one that requires the fewest assumptions – would have us leaning in the direction of just plain incompetence.
What a great place to be in – having to hope that the reason we don’t have any news on police vehicles being broken into is that our PD just doesn’t know what it’s doing.
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Chris Graham
