Sedro-Woolley police chief: Toddler taken in car theft shows surge in ‘brazen’ crime

A Sedro-Woolley mom of two started warming her car late Friday night in the cold while tucking her 2-year-old child into a restraint seat, before returning inside to get her infant.

In less than two minutes, while the mom stepped away to pick up her second child, a thief stole her car with the toddler in it.

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It’s a frightening example — as Sedro-Woolley Police Chief Lin Tucker told The Dori Monson Show — of how crime is rising in rural and suburban areas throughout the state, and not just in urban areas of the greater Puget Sound area.

The frantic mom “did all the right things” when she discovered her child and car stolen, Tucker told Dori’s listeners. In a case like this, the chief said, “everybody pulls out all the stops.”

Led by a veteran Sedro-Woolley sergeant, the Washington State Patrol and officers from other local agencies joined in the search.

As a result, the stolen car and toddler were found a half-hour later, but the vehicle thief was gone. Tucker said the investigation is in its early stages, but his team is doing a “detailed examination, DNA – all that CSI kind of stuff,” in order to track down the culprit.

“It’s pretty easy to victim blame, but really the blame rests on those individuals who are doing this all night, every night,” Tucker said.

“Nobody on the planet can blame that parent more than that parent,” Tucker said. “That beating doesn’t help anything. I would bet that most of us with that has more than one child has done it in the past.”

The chief called this a painful “object lesson” in the “surge of brazen crime” growing statewide.

In King County alone, Dori said, reports show nearly 40 cars were stolen daily in December 2021.

“We’re experiencing that on a smaller scale,” Tucker said.

His night-shift crew is looking for “bad guys all night long,” and “finding stolen cars virtually every other night.” Car thieves, he said, just “thumb their nose, punch the accelerator, and take off.”

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Like other law enforcement professionals who have come onto Dori’s show in the past, Tucker says the problem is tied to last year’s state legislation that restricted police officers from doing their job.

The chief remains cautious about whether these problems will be fixed.

“We’ve identified fixes to those, with legislators involved,” Tucker said. “It takes humans to make this legislation. It takes humans to fix it. … If they’re not fixed, it’s because somebody doesn’t want them fixed.”

Listen to Dori’s entire interview with Sedro-Woolley police chief Tucker Lin here:

Listen to Dori Monson weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.