Dirty, Suspicious

I passed three police cars stopped in the 1100 block of Felspar Street on the afternoon of January 5. I parked my car and as I walked toward them, two of the cars drove away. I asked the remaining officer, who was seated in the passenger side of his vehicle, what had happened.

“Stolen car,” he said about the white, two-door Toyota Solara.

“So, you were out doing your usual ticketing and just found it here?”

“I was just out waving at citizens and helping little old ladies cross the street,” joked SDPD officer Nick Minx. I asked Minx how he learned the vehicle was a stolen one.

“The rear window was broken,” he said. “I ran the plates. When you see a car with a heavy layer of dirt — dew lines running down through it — there’s a good chance that when you run the plates it’s stolen.”

When I asked Minx what would happen to the car, he stated that the SDPD would attempt to locate the owner. If the car is not drivable, it would be kept in a secured lot until the owner could arrange to come and get it.

“How often would you say cars get stolen in PB?” I asked.

“Hard to say...I don’t have the statistics...but more than you’d think. I see this sort of thing all the time...especially in Mission Beach.”

I thanked Officer Minx for his time, and as he shook my hand, he said, “Day-in, day-out,” then paused before he continued, “wait, how do they say that...oh, yeah... “all in a day’s work.”