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How to protect yourself from carjackings and car theft · Kvetch & Release

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  Hey, we're back John Ledkey here on Am eight hundred CKLW. Nearly half
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  of the one hundred and twenty four arrested by Ontario's Carjacking task Force we're out
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  on bail, with many released again after their latest arrest. That task force
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  saw one hundred and twenty four arrests and seven hundred and forty nine criminal charges
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  laid between September of last year and March of this year. We have found
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  out that forty four percent of those arrested we're out on bail though at the
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  time of their arrest, sixty one percent subsequently released on bail again, and
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  forty seven percent were repeat offenders. Joining me right now to discuss is CTV
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  crime specialist Mark Mendelssohn. How you doing. Mark, Good morning, John,
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  good good chat with you, Thanks for having thanks for joining me here
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  as well. Pretty staggering numbers here when you look at some of those,
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  quite frankly or from your perspective, are they well. I mean, there's
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  two metrics to look at. One is the number of arrests that are being
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  made and the number of vehicles that are being recovered and the charges that are
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  being laid. And you know, we've seen sort of the modus operandi morph
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  during this epidemic of car thefts in Ontario. You know, at the beginning,
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  it was people just you know, coming up to your house in the
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  middle of the night with a little computer thing and they you know, they
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  jiggled around with your remote and took your car and it was gone. And
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  then people got smarter. They started using charity bags, taking their fobs and
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  hiding them, you know, the steering mechanism, locks, brake pedal locks,
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  things of that nature. And of course the criminals are right up to
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  date, if not ahead of the police most of the time in this type
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  of technology. And then it got a little bit more serious and a bit
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  more dangerous when we started seeing the actual carjackings where they were coming up to
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  people in shopping malls with weapons and taking their vehicles, you know, kicking
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  indoors and demanding the fall and things of that nature. Because it was easier
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  for them, you know, that they didn't need electronic equipment. They could
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  just pick the car they wanted on the street, wait for the appropriate time,
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  and then waylay the people that were in the car. And what we've
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  seen now is that the arrests have been made, certainly in the last couple
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  of days with these provincial joint force projects going on. John Is, this
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  last group of people were also charged with a whole host of much more violent
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  crimes as opposed to just theft these you know, they were they were charged
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  with robberies of retail stores. So some of these vehicles were becoming crime vehicles
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  rather than being shipped you know, off to off to Halifax or Montreal and
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  a container and you know, hitting in West Africa. So it's morphing.
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  You know, you made a good point when you were doing the intro as
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  to how long these projects take. These things have been going on for a
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  long time because you know, the police need this little thing called evidence,
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  and you've got to be able to build a case in order to satisfy justice,
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  to sign these search warrants that allow them to enter these places, these
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  homes and cars and factories and shops and things of that nature, to to
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  recover these vehicles. That takes time. The provincial government has thrown in a
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  lot of money, uh to police services, specifically in the GTA, because
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  that's where we seem to be getting hit the most. Although I'm sure windsor
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  is not immune to any of this. But you know, and those investigations,
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  the intelligence has gleaned from them, that goes to you know, services
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  like like the windsor police as well, and of course the opp who are
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  involved. But to go back to the second part of the issue is the
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  bail And this is a conversation that you know, we've been having for for
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  years. You know, we hear about the revolving door justice system and things
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  of that nature. And you know, the Supreme Court of Canada has been
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  clear that, you know, bail or the ability to grant bail has to
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  be the de facto's starting point when we're dealing with bail hearings and things of
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  that nature. But when you when you think that sixty one percent of them,
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  okay, it's over half of them, or sorry, half of them,
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  we're already on bail. They were already on bail when they were arrested,
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  which means that they have no respect and are enabled unable to abide by
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  court orders in terms of what their release conditions are. So there's a complete
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  disregard for the law. And yet there we go. They're back out,
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  They're back out on the street again. They're getting bail again. The other
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  troubling thing for me is a thirty percent of them were young offenders. So
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  I heard. I heard in Uh, obviously Toronto is dealing with this the
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  GTA a lot more than we are down here, as you mentioned, but
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  I've heard that in cases in Toronto there are youth who are being offered,
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  you know, five thousand and six, seven thousand dollars to go jack a
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  car and that you know, it's a it's a quick way to make cash.
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  Have you heard anything about that? Oh? Absolutely, I mean this
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  is you know this can you can sum this up in two words. It's
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  organized crime and you know there's a lot of money to be made it.
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  You know, the risk and reward is very different than say, being in
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  a car and getting stopped by the police and you got ten kilos of heroin
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  in the trunk. The penalties are far less, and you have kids out,
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  they're young persons who are more than happy, you know, to put
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  two or three thousand dollars into their jenes and carjack a vehicle. And if
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  they do get arrested, and that they do get charged, and that they
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  do get convicted, their penalties are are nowhere near what an adult's going to
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  receive, So it's attractive for the youth, and it makes good business sense
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  for the people who are running these organized crime gangs. Well that's the problem.
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  What it comes down to is, you know, dollars and cents.
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  If they make sense, people will do it. How can people protect themselves?
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  You and I have talked before on other shows about I know ballards that
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  are being installed. Costcos actually rolled out ballards for driveways now. But what
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  are some of the ways that you would recommend that people best protect themselves from
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  not only car thefts, but also carjackings. And when it comes to car
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  jackings, like should they just hand the keys over? Well, in terms
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  of car thefts, I mean, if you've got a garage, use it.
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  If your garage locks, make sure it's locked. The second thing is
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  that you know, I still am a promoter of, you know, the
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  steering wheel locks and the brake pedal locks, because these guys want to get
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  in and out quick and they don't want to have to sit there with a
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  saw and start playing around for three and a half minutes because they're exposing themselves.
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  Air tags. You know, everybody says I'm throwing air tags and other
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  similar you know, GPS devices in the car. That's all very good,
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  but that only helps you after the car has been stolen and you know,
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  maybe you can locate it after that. The ballers are becoming a big thing
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  here in Toronto. I know lots of people now who are throwing them in.
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  But you know, I also know that within a couple of weeks,
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  the bad guys are going to figure out a way to defeat the baller system,
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  to have it drop back down into the ground, or to you know,
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  work around the locking systems that some of them are coming with, or
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  they're going to drive it right over your front lawn. So so that you
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  know the criminals are they're not stupid, and they're going to find ways to
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  defeat the systems that we all put in. If you are the victim of
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  a carjacking, and I'm not talking about somebody taking out of your home,
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  I'm talking about getting you know, cornered in a parking lot or at a
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  red light or anything like that. It's a car, it's a vehicle,
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  it's metal in its rubber, and you have insurance and your life is simply
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  not worth risking for that. And I think that you know you need to,
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  you know, comply, give them the keys, make your best efforts
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  to get as good of a description as you can of the individuals. You
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  know, Notify the police, call nine one one as soon as as soon
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  as it's safe to do so. But I don't think anybody is really making
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  a wise decision if they decide that they're going to push back on this,
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  because you know, a lot of these people are not just with knives but
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  with guns as well, and it's just not worth the risk.