‘You lose sense of security:’ Burstall deals with ATM theft

The town of Burstall is dealing with an unusual type of break-in.

Kim Lacelle, the chief administrative officer with the Rural Municipality of Deer Forks No. 232, said the town’s locked shop had been broken into.

“(They) managed to get our payloader out and used that to drive down the street — barely a block — to tear the corner off the credit union and take the ATM out,” Lacelle said Monday. “Then they, I’m assuming, used the payloader to open the ATM because I don’t think they are easily accessible in that regard and took the money out of it and left.

“The ATM is sitting here right now in the parking lot.”

The Cypress Credit Union issued a statement to its customers on Facebook saying contractors were on site to assess the damage. The branch will remain closed until further notice.

“Everyone is feeling quite devastated and quite violated,” said Burstall Mayor Joan MacPherson. “It’s a huge problem for a small community. It’s a big blow for a small community.

“I could have wept (when I heard it happened). I went down and looked. It’s a big blow to this town and it’s a town I love very much.”

Lacelle said that while it is a bizarre series of events, they’re more common than people think in small towns.

“About a year ago around Thanksgiving, our shop got broken into and we got about $15,000 worth of tools stolen at that time,” she said. “That takes a long time to recover from and deal with insurance and what not.

“A couple weeks ago, we had some fuel stolen from our tanks. They had cut the power to the tanks right at the ground, hooked up a generator and proceeded to take about $1,000 worth of gas.

“It was at that time that we were wondering if they were scoping out a few things because one of our employees noticed smudges on the window like when someone cups their hands around their face to look in a window. There was that kind of smudge on the window and a weird thing we had discussed and now here we are a couple weeks later and then this happens.”

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According to Lacelle, these sorts of crimes have an effect on the community and there are concerns over them continuing to happen.

“The problems are that we are half an hour from police service and things happen quite quickly and it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere really so we’re kind of an easy target unfortunately,” Lacelle said. “If they get caught, they go to court and they get let go and they come back.

“There are probably going to be quite a few security systems go up around here I would say now. You lose sense of security and feel vulnerable. It’s a long process to go through to get things repaired and fixed and your sense of safety, you feel violated for sure. Even though it was not my house, it was a workplace, but you still feel violated.

“Definitely (there’s) a sense of violation and that sense of security being gone. (I’m) pretty shocked that anyone would do that kind of damage for, I don’t think, they got away with a bunch of cash if I’m being honest.”

Lacelle believes that to help deter these sort of crimes, harsher punishments may be needed.

“My suggestion and something to get out there is the consequences for these people have to be stiffer to deter them from repeating and the cops can do all the paperwork and charge them with all these things and get them to court in front of a judge and they can get their hand slapped,” Lacelle said.

“They don’t end up doing much time and then they are right back in there again a few months later. The consequences need to be better to deter this from happening in my opinion.”

Burstall is located 200 kilometres west of Swift Current near the Alberta border.

On Monday, the RCMP said officers from the Leader detachment were called Sunday just after 4:15 a.m., about the break-in.

Police said investigators determined the getaway truck had been stolen from Leader late on Saturday. The truck and parts of the ATM were found Sunday approximately 10 kilometres west of Liebenthal, but the stolen cash wasn’t recovered.

Anyone with information about the break-in is asked to call Leader RCMP at 306-628-4600 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.