On a Sunday morning this past March, Ted Ruckman drove his white Ford truck to the Palisade peach orchard his family has owned for four generations, killed the engine, slipped the keys into the console, and set off around a garage to fix a broken-down backhoe. While making the repairs, Ruckman heard the light crunch of gravel under tires but didn’t think much of it. One of his neighbors headed to church, most likely. When he rounded the garage on his way to pick up more parts, however, Ruckman discovered his truck was gone.
Two days later and five miles away, as friends and family gathered for the funeral of Kenneth Sanders, a former U.S. Marine who died from cancer at the age of 71, thieves kicked in his widow’s front door. Several men tore through the Mesa County home, ripping open cabinets and riffling through drawers, stealing firearms and much of the jewelry Kenneth had purchased for his wife, Peggy, during their 46 years of marriage. When a local deputy arrived, he found the Sanders’ TV in the driveway and a boot print on the splintered front door.
That same month, a task force created specifically to investigate car-related crimes met at the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office for its regularly scheduled weekly operation. The group wasn’t designed to investigate burglaries like the one at the Sanders’ house, but the leaders of the task force, a Colorado State Patrol (CSP) initiative dubbed Beat Auto Theft Through Law Enforcement (BATTLE) West, had been trying something new to fight a rise in auto thefts. From 2019 to
