Gig Harbor police seize car involved in Cushman Trail car prowls, seek suspect
Gig Harbor police seized a car in connection with a series of car-prowling incidents on the Cushman trail, and are seeking a suspect.
Gig Harbor police chief Kelly Busey told The Gateway in an email that an officer on bicycle patrol came across a suspicious vehicle Monday, April 22, and recognized it from a previous case.
“One of our patrol officers on bicycle patrol at the Borgen Boulevard trailhead noticed a vehicle resembling a car associated with a vehicle prowl last week from this same location. He summoned some marked units and detained the two occupants of the car,” Busey said. “Detectives came to the scene and confirmed that this was the same car and it likely contains evidence of the previous vehicle prowl.”
Busey said the actual suspect from the vehicle prowl was not there, but that police seized the vehicle pending a search warrant. He confirmed on Tuesday that they were still searching for the suspect, who was suspected in three car prowls: two at the trailhead and one on Harborview Drive.
Busey said the stolen items included currency, vehicle registration, an iPad, and dry cleaning.
Cushman Trail and its trailheads have been frequent targets of car prowlers. In 2015, the city rebooted its bicycle patrol unit to have a greater presence in the area. In 2020, the city also created twenty brightly-colored “locator posts” to allow callers to better identify where they are in the event they need to call 911.
Busey said the officers on bikes are meant “to concentrate their patrol efforts on the Cushman Trail and retail areas.”
“Our bicycles are deployed when we have enough staffing to free up someone to patrol on them,” Busey said. “They are uniformed officers and we have approximately nine of our officers certified to patrol via bike.”
This story was originally published April 20, 2021 at 11:48 AM.
