Officers arrest Christmas Grinch

Police arrested one man last month after he stole a trunk full of wrapped Christmas presents in the middle of the night from the car of an Ottawa community engagement and outreach manager.

And it took ingenuity on behalf of the investigating officers and help from the community to identify the man responsible for the theft.

When Multifaith Housing Initiative manager Adrian B. discovered someone had stolen the presents from the back of his car, he reached out to the community for help.

The gifts had been dropped off by Ottawa Police Service (OPS) Neighbourhood Resource Team (NRT) officers the day before from Toy Mountain and were slated to be delivered to children and their families in Vanier. Adrian only discovered they had been stolen after he parked at the community centre and went to his trunk to bring them inside.

“I turned around and saw the children coming,” said Adrian, who was devastated at the discovery and had to apologize about the missing gifts. “When it happened I wasn’t thinking about police, I was thinking about the children. I felt very badly. And we had wonderful special food gift cards that were given to us from Mackay United Church.”

But the next day, Adrian reached out to NRT Constable Jennings, who began the slow and steady work of identifying who was responsible. Word about the theft spread fast across Ottawa, and Adrian was delighted to see an outpouring of support from residents city-wide.

“Over $5,000 was donated so quickly by generous Ottawa residents,” said Adrian. “And they also sent toys, brand new toys, there were so many. Instead of giving the children one gift, we were able to give them multiple gifts and larger grocery store gift cards for the families.”

NRT Constables Jennings, Pedersen, and Sergeant McLean began speaking with their network of community groups, as well as checking in with online neighbourhood forums on places like Facebook. The officers also went door to door speaking with residents and collecting things like doorbell camera video footage. It was during one of those conversations that they learned about a suspect.

“What also helped is that the suspect immediately used some of the gift cards at a local grocery store,” said NRT Sgt. McLean. “Csts. Pedersen and Jennings went and visited the store, reviewed the video, and identified him.”

Sgt. McLean credits the work his team has done to build relationships within the community with the response they received.

“Everyone wanted to help, it really was amazing how the community rallied behind this incident,” said Sgt. McLean. “And then they raised more money than we could ever deliver, even if we recovered the gifts.”

And Adrian, well he was witness to his own Christmas miracle.

“I’ve always encouraged my family to volunteer, to give back to the community,” said Adrian. “I think we live in a very good place and Ottawa has great people.”

He also credits his relationship with Cst. Jennings and the NRT team for the reason this was solved so quickly.

“I want people to know that the police are working for our community; that they solved this,” said Adrian. “A few weeks after I reached out to him he called me to tell me the good news that they had made an arrest and charged the person involved.”

The man responsible was arrested and charged with one count of mischief, one count of possession of stolen property, and criminal use of stolen gift cards.

And the kids? Well, they had a merry Christmas after all.