Please remember to lock your vehicle doors and do not keep anything of value in sight in the vehicle. It is best to remove anything valuable from the vehicle. Over the last month we have taken numerous reports of unlocked vehicles being entered. Over the years we have taken very few reports of damage to vehicles to gain entry to them. These incidents have been happening all around town and not in any particular area.

Also we have been getting several complaints again about scam calls. Do not give you social security number, date of birth or other personal information to someone that called you. No bank, law enforcement agency or government agency is going to call you and tell you that you need to drive to Wal Mart or a similar place to get a pre-paid card and give them the card information.

This will save the police department time to work on other things as well as save you the hassle of spending time on having to fill out new bank paperwork, PennDOT forms and replacing whatever else you may have had taken from your vehicle or scammed out of. Both types of cases can be hard to solve. The entered vehicles are normally only solved when someone is caught on camera or in the act while on patrol. The scams are extremely hard to solve since most of the suspects that are involved are not using a real phone number and most don't live anywhere near Columbia.