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F RIDAY , S EPTEMBER 3, 2010
32 Pages
Page A20
YOUR SOURCE FOR LOCAL NEWS, SPORTS, WEATHER AND ENTERTAINMENT abbotsfordtimes.com
City still cooling heels on Heat cash
JUST DUCKY BRIDGING THOSE BACK-TO-SCHOOL BLUES
Report “imminent” CAM TUCKER camtuckertimes@gmail.com
T
– RAFE ARNOTT/TIMES
With thoughts of school starting again, Susana Aparicio, 17, took some time to watch the ducks swim below the boardwalk in Mill Lake. “I’m going to miss this once school starts. Summer lets you spend time looking at things you enjoy.” For thousands of Abbotsford and Mission youths, school resumes Tuesday.
he release of a financial report on the Abbotsford Heat and the Abbotsford Entertainment and Sports Centre for the 2009-2010 fiscal year could be released very soon, said Mayor George Peary. Not that we haven’t heard similar sentiments before. The report was expected to come out in July, and its release to the public has been pushed back even further as accountants for both the city and the American Hockey League team continue to debate on the final numbers. see HEAT, page A6
‘Baffling’ spike in Abby break and enters Seemingly unrelated acts double weekly average RAFE ARNOTT RArnott@abbotsfordtimes.com
P
olice in Abbotsford are at a loss to explain a massive jump in break and enter numbers during the last week of August. Officers attended 33 property-related crimes scenes between Aug. 23 and Aug. 29, almost double the city’s average of 17, Const. Ian MacDonald said. When the overnight reports were tallied, officers were dumbfounded. “We couldn’t believe what the numbers were for that week.” There was nothing in any statistics or intelD&G VERSACE RAY BAN VOGUE CK MAUI JIM CALVIN KLEIN
ligence that police had to alert them to the spike, MacDonald said, no warning signs or upward trends. “The three weeks prior to that spike we were in decent shape.” The crimes took place across the city, and there is no pattern or shared MO in the incidents, MacDonald pointed out. Nothing links the criminal activity to a particular individual or group. Incidents like these go against normal property crimes spikes, said MacDonald, who added that historically a sudden increase is usually attributed to an individual or a group on a spree. “It’s all over the map. When we look at the
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MOs involved in these break and enters there and they didn’t report it to us,” he said. isn’t a consistency to them. MacDonald said this isn’t about police “We’re not satisfied that we have a [James blaming members of the community, it’s Ryan] Chaffey or another proabout police asking members lific offender that happens to First reported @ of the community to work with be extremely active right now,” abbotsfordtimes.com them. MacDonald said. “We’re 210 officers and we want “Different MOs, different times of day . . . to be responsive and do what we can . . . but so at this point we definitely need the public’s we need [the public] to make that call.” If the city sees a doubling in break and assistance.” A request that is somewhat ironic, since enters, MacDonald said, in theory, police MacDonald admitted there was one common should see an increase in calls reporting susfactor in most of the incidents: neighbours picious activity. But that hasn’t happened. “We’re trying to remove that hesitation.” witnessed the crimes. “Almost in every instance we’re coming across [witnesses] who did make observa- ◗ Anyone who sees suspicious activity is tions, either of the actual break and enter or asked to call the APD’s non-emergency line some indicators there was going to be one at 604-859-5225.
Need Knows No Season Never before have we seen such a demand on our resources, services and food supply. Would you help us help others by making a donation to The Salvation Army Centre of Hope? Please call 604-852-9305. ®
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