Foreign media are having a field day over Toronto police’s newest unofficial policy to address car theft, i.e., just leave your fobs at the front door to make it easier for the thieves.
“If you live in Toronto, just leave your car keys by the front door. In fact, probably don’t even bother locking your front door,” a Sky News Australia host said, mocking the absurdity of the recent advice.
“Why not just leave the whole place unlocked? Put your jewelry out on the front porch. Maybe your TV. ‘Cause you don’t want to get hurt. All the thieves want is your car and your stuff and whatever else. This is where we are.”
Indeed, this is where we are. And it’s no joke, though it is absolutely risible. Canada, and the GTA in particular, has become so unsafe, so crime-ridden, that police have begun advising residents to make it easier for thieves to steal from them to avoid possible break-ins and violent confrontations, which have also skyrocketed in recent years.
The recommendation that has eyebrows raising
“To prevent the possibility of being attacked in your home, leave your fobs at your front door,” Const. Marco Ricciardi told concerned Toronto residents earlier this month. “‘Cause they’re breaking into your home to steal your car; they don’t want anything else. A lot of them that [the police are] arresting have guns on them. And they’re not toy guns. They’re real guns. They’re loaded.”
To address this issue, last month, Canada held a national auto theft summit, where even PM Justin Trudeau had to concede that the problem was out of hand, saying that car thieves have become “more brazen.”
Indeed, one particularly unfortunate family was brought up during the summit who’d had their car stolen twice in the last year, only to have it stolen shortly thereafter a third time.
According to Vice President of the Insurance Bureau of Canada for Ontario Amanda Dean, the issue of carjackings is a “national crisis” that has become an “epidemic in Ontario,” with auto-theft claims exceeding one billion dollars for the first time ever in 2022.
Of those claims, $700 million came from Ontario, $500 million of which came from the Greater Toronto Area alone.
Besides just capitulating with criminals and leaving your fobs out for them to take, police have also begun going door to door to deliver door stops after several videos emerged of masked gang members kicking down doors in a Markham neighbourhood.
Other advice includes investing in an alarm system, installing security cameras, and installing motion sensor lights. All of this is good advice and certainly less likely to draw mockery from the world over the abysmal state of Trudeau’s Canada.
