Bellingham Police recover most stolen cars, but ‘I wouldn’t dare sit in it if you paid me’
Though the number of car thefts in Bellingham during the first two months of 2022 quadrupled over the same period from a year earlier, there is a silver lining.
Most of those stolen cars have been recovered.
As of March 7, only 33 of the 186 cars that were reported stolen to the Bellingham Police Department in the previous 90 days were still listed as stolen, Lt. Claudia Murphy told The Bellingham Herald.
That 82% recovery rate was in line with data Murphy previously reported to The Herald, which showed more than 80% of stolen vehicles were recovered either by police or victims who located their own cars each year since 2013.
Now, the state of the 153 previously stolen cars that were recovered between Dec. 7 and March 7? Well . . . maybe that silver lining has a touch of gray.
“They really run the gamut,” Murphy told The Herald. “It’s everything from you would never know that anyone took it and it’s almost like you might have left it parked on the wrong street all the way to your vehicle is an absolute, total destruction, because it’s either wrapped around a tree or it’s like the fellow that hit our officer and totaled that truck.”
Used and abused
Murphy was referring to a March 3 incident in which a stolen Ford Ranger was spotted by Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office deputies along West Bakerview Road near Interstate 5. Rather than stopping when the deputies activated their emergency lights, the driver sped off on Bakerview.
Deputies did not chase after him due to Washington laws that restrict when and how a pursuit can be initiated.
But the driver of the stolen truck still reportedly ran a red light at Meridian Street, narrowly missed two pedestrians who were in a crosswalk, and slammed into a Bellingham Police Department Chevy Tahoe that was traveling northbound and approaching the intersection at normal traffic speed, according to police reports at the time.
The stolen truck was incapacitated, and the driver ran away and wasn’t located. The officer inside the patrol vehicle was not seriously injured, but the stolen truck had heavy damage, including the left front wheel torn off.
But it’s not just the stolen cars that get used and abused.
Many times, what was inside the car at the time of the theft is also stolen and never returned.
Heather Taft of Sunnyland wrote about her stolen car in a Feb. 10 post on the social media site Nextdoor, and she gave The Herald permission to use her comment.
“My car was found (although they) took everything from my son’s graduation tassel and my fiance’s disabled mirror placard to my grandchildren’s toys and clothes new granddaughter’s baby doll to all my safety gear for work,” Taft wrote. “And they messed up my car so it won’t start.”
Sometimes police find items stolen in numerous other car break-ins and burglaries stashed in stolen vehicles they recover, such as what happened Thursday, March 24, in a single-vehicle crash on James Street just north of Sunset Pond.
In that instance, the stolen Volvo was found with a host of stolen items, including American flags awarded to a former U.S. Army soldier and a pair of shotguns, Murphy told The Herald. The flags had been stolen in an earlier burglary and were returned to the former solider, and police were working to identify and return the other stolen items in the car to their proper owners.
Murphy said the Volvo was totaled.
‘You have no idea’
Many stolen vehicles in Bellingham are used as a place to use drugs away from the area’s cold and rain, Murphy said, adding that many recovered vehicles are so toxic that they can endanger the owner’s health.
“To get your car back as an owner, I wouldn’t dare sit in it if you paid me,” Murphy said. “I absolutely would not sit in the car, because you have no idea what is on the seat, you have no idea what someone touched in there or what they’ve left behind.”
Murphy said many owners of recovered stolen cars tell police that they find large amounts of trash, including small squares of aluminum foil in their cars.
“Some of these cars are just full of the aluminum squares and little straws and pipes and needles,” Murphy said. “You have no idea if there are fentanyl crumbs in there, and we all know that fentanyl is extremely deadly. If it’s in a powder form, it can kill immediately.
“You’re going to need a company to come in and professionally clean that vehicle and very likely decontaminate it from methamphetamine fumes or fentanyl fumes. We recommend people be very careful. Don’t just hop in your car and drive it away, because you just don’t know. And if you see a bunch of drug paraphernalia in there, we would recommend getting it professionally cleaned so that stuff is thrown away properly.”
It’s also important to allow police crime scene investigators a chance to process a recovered car to look for forensic evidence, such as fingerprints, that could possibly lead to an arrest, Murphy said.
This story was originally published March 28, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
