It’s been three weeks since a rash of vehicle break-ins in Waynesboro that included at least two belonging to Albemarle County Police officers, and we still have no word on the status of the investigation by Waynesboro Police.
“The vehicle break-ins is still a very active case, so we aren’t able to release anything at this time,” a police department spokesperson told us Monday night by email.
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?
- Protecting the shield: Still no update on the police vehicle break-ins in Waynesboro
What we know about this, we only know by accident: one of our staffers signed up, some time ago, for Ring alerts from the Waynesboro PD, and got a Ring alert about the break-ins, which took place over a 36-hour period from June 9-11, and forwarded it to me, so that I could try to track it down.
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 Albemarle County government official who got back to us on the news denies that police reports or computers were taken.
That county spokesperson provided the only confirmation on the record from anyone in officialdom – giving us a list of items taken from the ACPD vehicles broken into in Waynesboro that included a police rifle, ammunition and a police vest.
I’m beginning to think that we’re never going to find out what happened with this.