The Estevan Police Service is investigating several cases of vandalism that occurred in the Energy City over the past couple of weeks. Primarily graffiti and wall writings occurred in the north and northeast side of the city.
“A lot of it involves spray painting and different vulgar type comments,” said Deputy Police Chief Murray Cowan.
Unknown individuals randomly spray paint private and public buildings. The latest graffiti was spotted on the walls of the buildings near the Estevan Comprehensive School. Earlier, Spruce Ridge School sustained some damage. Spray painting appeared on fences, garage doors and vehicles. Besides, the EPS had reports of tires being slashed on vehicles.
Cowan believes this is the work of the same group of people. And this crime wave is still ongoing.
“We’ve been working quite hard on this file. We have a couple of our members assigned to it,” said Cowan.
But unfortunately, so far no one was arrested, and the police don’t have any suspects yet.
“We are certainly reaching out to the public on this one. These people are obviously going around at nighttime after dark. So we are asking the public to certainly keep an eye out. If they hear or see anything suspicious in their neighbourhood, do not hesitate to contact the Estevan Police Service,” said Cowan.
He also asked the public to keep the Crime Stoppers in mind, as this organization allows full anonymity. He also stated that if the information provided by a member of the public will help to catch the offenders, the person would receive a reward.
“You can call in with any information you may have in regards to this, and of course you could be subject to a reward too if an arrest is made in regards to this,” said Cowan.
The police are doing their best to put a stop to it before there is more damage, but it might be hard to achieve without public assistance and support.
“We certainly want the community to be well aware that this is happening, particularly in the area where it seems to be happening in so that we can get more eyes and ears out there to keep an eye out for this stuff. Because it’s unfortunate, but the police can’t be everywhere at once and we certainly need help from the community to catch these guys,” said Cowan.
So far, offenders seem to be quite random and don’t seem to have any kind of goal or motive behind it.
“It almost looks like crimes of opportunity where they just seem to be in the right place at the right time. Now that being said, we are not 100 per cent sure of that. Hopefully, it’s something that we can sort out as the investigation continues,” said Cowan.
Estevan hasn’t seen vandalism of this kind for quite a while, and before it wasn’t continuing. So the contemporary cases are even more worrying.
“Sometimes you get those random acts of mischief where people would spray paint a fence, or a car, or a building somewhere, but then that’s it. Or they might do two or three places and then they stop and they don’t do it again. And the concern with this is that it’s ongoing,” said Cowan.
These offences fall under the mischief section under the Criminal Code. Depending on how much damage there is the offence can be more or less serious, but the primary dollar amount is what matters.
“If it’s mischief in excess of $5,000, it’s a more serious offence under the Criminal Code. And given the amount of damage we are seeing I would almost say that we are at that point,” said Cowan.
A tire slashed with a knife can’t be repaired and has to be replaced, which means other tires on that vehicle need to be replaced as well and it makes the total cost add up quite quickly.
Besides, if offenders are carrying knives or any other type of equipment to do the damage, that might be considered dangerous they may face other charges like possession of weapons, possession of break and enter tools and more. In the worst-case scenario, the offenders may end up behind the bars.
