Allison Hanes: Cracking down on car theft comes with added risks

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It was like a scene out of an action movie, but it happened on the streets of downtown Montreal.

Police were trying to intercept what they believed was a stolen BMW heading southbound on Stanley St. last month. Officers had stopped their cruiser at the corner of Sherbrooke St., right next to the Sofitel, as the suspect vehicle approached in a line of traffic coming down the one-way street. But suddenly, the driver reversed through an empty parking space onto the sidewalk and backed all the way up to Docteur-Penfield Ave., before speeding away.

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A bystander caught it all on video.

Luckily there were no pedestrians walking down Stanley when the bandit zoomed recklessly up the sidewalk backwards.

But this is just one example of the increasing brazenness of car thieves — as well as the risks that come along with a more muscular crackdown on stolen vehicles in Montreal. The dangers are increasing for police and the public alike.

Crooks are increasingly weaponizing their ripped-off rides against cops who stand in their way. There have been 21 rammings in the city since the start of the year, according to the Fraternité des policiers and policières de Montréal, with suspects either crashing into squad cars or hitting officers on foot, to escape. In April, there were three such incidents in a single day. Fortunately, there have been no serious injuries among law enforcement — yet.

The robbers haven’t emerged unscathed, however.

In mid-April, police opened fire when the driver of a Honda CR-V stolen from the Montreal Children’s Hospital tried to run down a cop. The suspect took a bullet in the upper body.

As thefts of trucks, cars and SUVs have surged in recent years, clamping down on the culprits has become a priority for politicians, police, manufacturers, insurers and the public alike.

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Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre held a showy press conference outside the Port of Montreal calling it a “parking lot” for hot wheels. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held a two-day summit in Ottawa bringing together stakeholders for law enforcement and industry to discuss solutions.

The number of stolen vehicles soared 57.9 per cent in Quebec between 2021 and 2023, according to a study by Équité Association, an insurance-industry crime and fraud prevention group. In Ontario, it rose 48.2 per cent with an eye-popping 300-per-cent spike in Toronto alone since 2015. Insurance write-offs from theft rang in at a record $1.2 billion in 2022.

Black-market automobiles is a lucrative business for organized crime. However the perpetrators of the heists are often teens — some of whom aren’t even old enough to get their driver’s license.

As police are called upon to respond to the rise in vehicle thefts, they are finding the tools at their disposal lacking.

Radio-Canada recently obtained a letter sent by Montreal Police to Public Security Minister François Bonnardel highlighting the increasing threat to to its officers as well as the need for better training and tactics.

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Quebec’s police college doesn’t even teach recruits controlled immobilization techniques — ie: how to crash one vehicle into another to block it. Such training could help law enforcement to nab car thieves quickly, while avoiding dangerous pursuits. Nevertheless, this manoeuvre can cause bodily harm, too.

The letter also said the protocols for police pursuits that have been in place for 25 years are outdated. It must be a matter of life and death to justify one in the first place, and the necessity must be balanced against the danger to the general public.

Tracking down suspects that get away after the fact (not to mention the stolen cars that often end up hidden away or in shipping containers) is onerous and time-consuming.

But do we really want more high-speed chases?

TVA covered the “spectacular” intervention on Highway 440 in Laval to arrest the thief believed to have backed up the sidewalk in the BMW — as well as the massive rush-hour traffic jam that resulted. That was merely inconvenient.

Two minors, ages 14 and 16, died in March when an officer responding to reports of two drive-by shootings gave chase to a car driving erratically. The teens crashed their stolen vehicle into a tree in Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.

Two grandparents and their infant grandchild were killed in a fiery wreck near Toronto in April when police there sped after the suspect in a liquor store robbery driving the wrong way down Highway 401.

It’s important to clamp down on car theft. But this isn’t the stuff of action films or video games. The crime, and efforts to stop it, have real-world consequences which can sometimes turn tragic.

ahanes@postmedia.com

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