The Police Want You to Hand Over Your Car Keys . . . to Criminals

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Police in the city of Toronto have come under fire lately for some controversial advice. Car thefts have become such a problem in the city that citizens have taken extra steps to protect their vehicles. With approximately 12,000 vehicles stolen in Toronto in 2023 alone, some residents have installed security cameras, and more are using fob signal-masking accessories such as Faraday boxes, pouches, and bags. These Faraday accessories prevent criminals from capturing and then mimicking the signals emitted by key fobs. This is in response to the unlawful practice of using radio frequency amplifiers that replicate the frequency that your key fob uses to gain access to your automobile.

When car thieves have been thwarted in their attempts to do this, or if they would simply prefer to use brute force, they break into homes, locate a vehicle’s keys, and then roar off in the owner’s car, leaving broken glass and mayhem in their wake. You can imagine what type of potential violence there is here. These criminals, who are often working on behalf of international criminal gangs, have become even more brazen of late.

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What has the police response been? It has been interesting, to say the least.

At a public safety meeting held in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in March, a Toronto police officer suggested that car owners should place their keys just inside the front door of their homes so that if any thieves break in looking for them, there will be no violent confrontation, as the keys will be right at their fingertips. This is an incredible statement for a police officer to make. But he was not the first to do this. At the February meeting, Constable Marco Ricciardi of the Toronto Police Department similarly suggested that homeowners should store their vehicle keys in a faraday pouch just inside the front door to pre-empt violent confrontations:

To prevent the possibility of being attacked in your home, leave your fobs at the front door because they are breaking into your home to steal your car; they don’t want anything else. A lot of them that they’re arresting have guns on them and they are not toy guns. They are real guns. They’re loaded.

This advice has precipitated backlash online and has gained international attention from the Daily Mail, The Washington Times, The New York Post, FOX News, and other outlets. In one sense it seems as if the Toronto police have decided to simply throw up their hands and concede defeat. This speaks to a sorry state of affairs, indeed. City News even spoke to a homeowner in Unionville who was given a metal doorstopper by the York Regional Police for her own protection, given that she resides in a high-theft area.

It is not unheard of for police departments to remind citizens that their lives and the lives of others are paramount and should have a higher importance than material goods, but there’s something amiss here. Let us have a look at the news release that was issued by Toronto police after the notion of leaving one’s car keys at the front door went viral:

An officer at a recent community meeting suggested that people leave the keys to their vehicle in a faraday bag by the front door. While well meaning, there are also other ways to prevent auto theft motivated home invasions. For additional context, in Toronto, home invasions and break and enters for auto theft occurrences rose 400 percent in 2023. Police are concerned about an escalation in violence, where all sorts of weapons and firearms are being used to steal vehicles, and that includes during home invasions.

On March 18, Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw updated the Toronto Police Services Board about car thefts:

In regards to auto thefts and carjackings, the Chief told the Board that more than 12,000 vehicles were stolen in Toronto last year — that’s 34 vehicles a day, or one every 40 minutes.

“We have had 68 carjackings so far in 2024. That’s a 106 per cent increase compared to the same period last year,” said Chief Demkiw. “We are putting a significant amount of resources to address this citywide, and have seen an escalation of violence, threats and intimidation, where weapons are being used to steal vehicles.”

“Break and enters for auto thefts continue to rise. There have been 34 incidents so far this year compared to 22 for all of last year,” said Chief Demkiw.

The Provincial Carjacking Joint Task Force, co-led with the OPP, has arrested 121 suspects, laid 730 charges and recovered 157 stolen vehicles since September 21, 2023.

As already mentioned, the story has gained attention in the United States. Vic Ferrari, a former detective who is a 20-year veteran of the Auto Crimes Division of the New York City Police Department (NYPD), was astounded by the advice given by the Toronto officers. He pointed out that actually following it would further embolden criminals and is indicative of a breakdown in social cohesion:

It kind of looks like the Toronto Police are basically telling people to give up and don’t worry about getting your car stolen . . . It’s cowardice . . . Maybe it’s easy to give up, but you shouldn’t because it’s a total breakdown of society. . . . Don’t make it easy for them. Defend your car. Because what’s next? First, they’re going to steal your car, then they’re going to break into your house. Then they’re going to kick you out of your house. You got to take a stand with these people . . . No one is stopping these people from doing these things, and they’re getting a slap on the wrist. It falls on the police departments and the prosecutor’s office . . . [Criminals] say to themselves, “Well, look at this. I can make money stealing a car and nothing’s going to happen to me if I get caught, so I’m just going to keep doing it.” That’s a breakdown of society.

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Ferrari also emphasized that stolen vehicles allow criminals to perpetrate other offenses and that high rates of auto theft indicate an overall rise in crime in a city.

Ferrari’s observations are correct, and yet there might be something else going on as well. Although the car thefts are for the most part being driven by organized crime, there is the added element of their deliberate facilitation by Canada’s malevolent federal regime. In other words, Sam Francis’ concept of anarcho-tyranny is in play, whereby the authorities allow crime to proliferate as a means of terrorizing their own citizens. Criminals are running amok in Toronto, and this development fits perfectly into the strategy of a government that has shown itself to be enthusiastic about curbing its own citizens’ rights. As Francis wrote, “The result of anarcho-tyranny is that government swells in power, criminals are not controlled, and law-abiding citizens wind up being repressed by the state and attacked by thugs.” In other words, allowing crime to increase gives governments a pretext to curb their own citizens’ mobility rights and to enact more authoritarian measures as they see fit.

Edward Dutton has argued that, for many Leftists, non-white criminality is justified, as in their minds it is a form of protest that challenges notions such as “white supremacy”: “In the case of property crime, this is, surely, at least partly the fault of ‘systemic inequality’ against which the looter’s ‘crime’ is a noble form of protest.” Thus, allowing crime to run rampant serves the interests of Leftists as well as governments.

This isn’t limited to Canada, either, as a similar situation has also arisen in the United States. The Epoch Times has reported that breaking and entering thefts in the state of California are being perpetrated by legal Latin American migrants who are being flown in like criminal dilettante tourists. These “burglary tourists” work for criminal gangs that are cunning enough to take advantage of the United States’ lax temporary visa laws that do not require serious vetting or background checks.

It is obvious that these things are happening because our elected officials and those non-elected bureaucrats among the managerial state bureaucracies who work with them want them to happen. Having a cowering relict population of whites who are afraid to leave their houses because of crime makes people easier to control. And while ordinary people are isolated in their homes, as we were during the COVID pandemic, migrants flood in. In other words, it is yet another part of a diabolical scheme to transform our countries into authoritarian Third World slums.