CA Police Vehicle Stolen, Recovered
By: Michael Mello - Modbee.com
2/20/04
Community Service Officer Susan Cuevas was busy directing traffic around a Crows Landing Road accident Thursday morning, police said, and failed to see a man climb into her unlocked and running department vehicle and drive off.
About an hour later and three miles away, a man found the vehicle blocking his driveway on Service Road.
"They left it running and everything, with the windows down," said Mike Graham, whose home shares the driveway. "I didn’t know what it was doing here."
"We thought something had happened to the officer," said Vickey.
Robinson, who also lives where the truck was abandoned, said she and Graham wandered through the adjacent almond orchard, searching for an officer they never found. They didn’t see who drove the truck.
"That took some nerve, stealing a police car," Graham said.
After recovering the pickup, officers were driving down West Whitmore Avenue in south Modesto and spotted the man they thought was the car thief. They detained him but released him on insufficient evidence when a witness could not identify him, Detective Doug Ridenour said.
"If they can get prints that match up to this guy, we may be tracking him down again," Ridenour said.
The vehicle was intact, with only some money missing from Cuevas’ purse.
Sgt. Craig Mitchell said it’s common for officers to leave their vehicles running, "especially in an accident scene where the lights are one, and they’re sucking down a lot of juice."
Not every officer has a spare door key for his vehicle, Mitchell said, so sometimes the doors are left unlocked.
In May, youth service officer Gena McGill had her patrol car stolen after she left the car running while she went into Rose Avenue School to drop off some papers. Officers later arrested the thief after he clipped a man’s leg and hit a Sheriff’s Department patrol car.