Someone is smashing car windows on Glacier Drive, as this reporter experienced Saturday morning (Aug. 27).
Five other vehicles parked on the street that day had similar damage. One car even had a large rock lodged in its windshield.
According to Canmore RCMP, this had been an ongoing issue for the previous several days.
“I will tell you that we’ve had a couple in the last six days and I’m pretty surprised that it happened last night, because I know there was a couple the day before,” said Cst. Adam Richardson, Saturday (Aug. 27).
“Mischief is always a frustrating thing to deal with, but we’re going to try to make more patrols around that area for the next couple days and hopefully this won’t continue to happen,” he said. “It doesn’t happen a lot, right now it’s happening specifically on Glacier Drive, so it’s something we’re going to have to investigate.”
Glacier Drive, off Elk Run Boulevard, straddles an industrial area, with inward-facing, fenced town houses on one side of the street and the backs of businesses on the other. As such, few eyes are ever on the section of the street where the activity is happening.
“If anyone else has seen or heard anyone, they can contact the Canmore RCMP (403-678-5519) to help us,” said Richardson.
If the perpetrator of the smashings is caught, they may be made to pay for the damages.
“Anytime there’s a victim of crime, there’s a restitution form that can be filled out,” said Richardson. “Ultimately, it’s up to the courts to proceed with that.”
Kris Reeves, who parks several commercial vehicles on the street, said this has been an ongoing issue in the 17 years he had been in the area.
“Counting the numbers here, we got to be close to 20 vehicles in the last week that have been done,” he said. “Rumour has it the 10 that were done last week was with a broken skateboard.”
His vehicles, of which two were smashed, were part of last week’s activity.
“My thing, as business owners, is we’re forced to park our commercial vehicles out on this road,” he said. “I think something needs to be done about it. I’m not into cameras, but I think in this situation, I don’t know how else we’re going to stop it.”
As there is a Canmore bylaw preventing Reeves from parking his commercial vehicles in front of his house, which is a residential area, as a small business owner, parking them on Glacier Drive is his only option.
“I just about feel like grabbing my trucks right now and taking them down to my house until this gets solved and just keeping them in front of my house,” he said. “I don’t want to look at three vehicles in front of my house, as much as they’re not supposed to be there, but if I have to do that to protect them, then that’s what I’ll do and I’ll worry about bylaw when they come and see me.”
As the cost to replace a windshield is hardly more than the deductible for insurance, the result is the money comes out of the pockets of the people vandalized, he said.
“It’s very frustrating; something definitely needs to be done to ensure the protection of our vehicles,” said Reeves. “It’s one thing if they were breaking into vehicles and taking something – not that that’s any better – but all they’re doing is damaging our vehicles and costing us money.
“If these are local kids that are doing it, they need to be under control. This has happened too many times, they should be staking this out at night – there’s just nobody around here that sees it.”
Reeves has made numerous complaints to the Town, which have seemingly resulted in no action taking place.
“We pay our taxes, we do what we do as a community and citizens in Canmore, and I think our stuff deserves to be protected,” he said.
