Windsor police and Crime Stoppers are asking for help identifying suspects after a break-in at a local sports store. Police say on Feb. 21 around 5:30a.m., three suspects broke into Bob Reaume Sports at 5400 Tecumseh Road East and stole officially licensed sports memorabilia such as jerseys and baseball caps. Security video from the scene shows a suspect carrying a rock or a brick, and he manages to breach the business by breaking the window and crawling, through the window. A dark coloured Mitsubishi, gray in colour four door approaches the business and two other suspects get out of the vehicle. Crime Stoppers coordinator Const. Rick Surette says they want people to pay close attention to the Mitsubishi vehicle. “There’s not a lot of them around, so if anybody has any information with respect to anybody driving that sort of vehicle within that timeframe, give Crime Stoppers a call,” says Surette. Owner Bob Reaume says he got the call early in the morning about what happened. “Well, when I showed up, the window was broken,” he says. “There was a few things laying outside so the police are already here. I open the door, walk in, start answering some questions for them, showing them where stuff was missing and wait till they finish the report. Reaume says it’s disappointing. “Discouraging, but not surprising. I mean, it is what it is. I know we have stuff in here that are popular items,” says Reaume. He says most of the items stolen were hats and jerseys. The exact value was unknown. “The surprising thing was the amount of things that they bypassed to go to one, one area and then another, you know, hats and then football jerseys. There was stuff in between, not on the wish list for whoever needed it,” he says. The store already has bars on the doors and security cameras, but Reaume says they are looking into increasing security even more. Surette says there are additional ways to help prevent these type of things from happening. “If businesses have alarms, we recommend that they register them with their local police service or even have an enhanced version of an alarm system where they can observe what’s happening by way of a notification on their phone,” says Surette. Despite this break-in, police say the number of commercial break and enters is down so far this year. Yeah. Let’s start out by talking about some of the recent statistics with commercial break ins. What are they? Well, the three, police services in Windsor, Essex County report it, 49 break and enters commercial break and enters this year. However, that is actually a decrease from the same amount of break in entries we received last year. Here are the latest statistics for Windsor Police, LaSalle Police and Essex County OPP: If anyone has any information on the sports store break-in or others, they can reach out to Windsor-Essex Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS or online at catchcrooks.com.
