A Burnaby man has pleaded guilty to nine charges relating to string of commercial break-and-enters that occurred across the Lower Mainland late last year.
Gordon Vincent Gladstone, 42, was charged with 12 counts of burglary on March 18, 2019, for offences alleged to have occurred between Sept. 1, 2018 and Jan. 2, 2019. The three-month crime spree targeted a dozen small businesses in Delta, Vancouver, North Vancouver and White Rock that were closed for the night.
In a press release last spring, North Vancouver RCMP’s uniformed crime reduction team described the investigation as “like following a trail of Cheerios” that lead police to catching Gladstone in the middle of break-in number 12.
On Aug. 30, Gladstone pleaded guilty to nine of the 12 charges against him. A judge has ordered that he be held in prison until January, 2020.
“If you’ve had a break-in to your home or business you know how upsetting it is,” said North Vancouver RCMP media spokesperson Sgt. Peter DeVries in a press release. “When we take a victim’s report we see how emotional it is. It creates fear and anger, and it really hurts their sense of security. It’s really unfair. That’s one of the reasons we feel so motivated to identify and capture the people who do these kinds of crimes so that we can stop them from hurting people in our community.”
DeVries said cooperation and information sharing between RCMP and municipal agencies such as the Vancouver Police Department and Delta Police Department was important to making an arrest in this case.
“We’ve known for a long time that we have to work together to solve inter-jurisdictional crime,” he said. “This shows we are.”
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