Winnipeg car theft victims hope national summit leads to tougher penalties

Some Winnipeg drivers whose cars have been stolen are hoping the federal government will toughen penalties for car theft — an idea discussed at a national summit in Ottawa this week.

Morgan Lepack said she learned her 2006 Chevrolet Trailblazer was stolen from her workplace at a shopping center in Linden Woods on the morning of Feb. 1 after a co-worker noticed her car was out of place.

“I couldn't believe it,” said Lepak, who arrived at work only 45 minutes earlier.

“I came back to work. I checked my wallet… My keys are there,” she said, adding that there were no other keys in the locked car.

Lepak, whose SUV was never found, is now among the thousands of people victimized by car thefts in Winnipeg each year. Although she has a rental car through the Manitoba Public Insurance System, she had to seek help in the first days after the theft to change appointments and get her children to school.

He also worries about the cost of finding a replacement, if not restoring it, given the current price of the vehicle.

“It's not fair,” Lepak said. “I didn't do anything wrong. I was driving my car and someone decided to steal it.”

Police say auto theft in Manitoba is generally a crime of opportunity.

But in some other provinces, such as Quebec and Ontario, authorities say organized crime groups target vehicles and sometimes ship them overseas, using the proceeds of crime to fund other illegal activities.

Officials from the Manitoba Department of Justice were among those in attendance at the national auto theft summit in Ottawa Thursday, Justice Minister Matt Wiebe said.

“We're requiring them (the federal government) to move into areas where they control whether they're working with producers, whether they're working with border services,” Wiebe said Thursday afternoon.

“I've also heard they're looking at mandatory minimum sentences. I think that would all help.”

Wiebe said that while Manitoba doesn't have the same problems with organized car theft as other provinces, he wants to “make sure that something like this doesn't come into Manitoba.”

He said he supports mandatory minimum sentences for serial car thefts or when organized crime is involved, but not in all cases.

“Here in Manitoba, we need to understand the reasons why someone steals a car,” Wiebe said.

“We have to make sure we're holding them accountable, but we understand that wherever we can provide some kind of support, we can make sure it's not an issue, that's how we're going to move.”

“Crimes of Opportunity”: Winnipeg Police

Winnipeg Police Chief Danny Smith, who serves as president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, also attended Thursday's summit.

He cautioned that tougher penalties are not always the answer.

“Organized crime, of course, but there are different roles in organized crime. For example, children – and often they are young people involved in theft – I think we need to be proportionate to that,” Smith said. .

“We can't keep 18-year-olds in custody for long periods of time when they don't understand what part of the beating order they're in,” he said.

“I think we want to try to raise the order of magnitude a little bit, not just bash the young people involved.”

Sergeant. Trevor Thompson of the Winnipeg Police Service's Financial Crimes Unit said 3,660 vehicles were stolen in the city in 2023, down slightly from 3,749 in 2022.

However, this is higher than the number of thefts in 2018 (2,805), 2019 (3,462), 2020 (2,896) and 2021 (2,948), according to data provided by Winnipeg police.

Thompson said stolen vehicles in Winnipeg are often used in other crimes, such as burglaries or break-ins, but most are recovered.

Auto theft is a different problem in Winnipeg than in other areas, he said.

“More than 90 percent of auto thefts here are crimes of opportunity, and the vast majority are vehicles stolen using the owner's key or keys,” he said in a phone interview.

Police are watching national trends here, he said, and in other jurisdictions, “these vehicle thefts are often done without a key using technology — interception of key fob transmissions between the key fob and the vehicle … and other types of technology. attacks”.

But Danny Fisher was shocked when his 2005 Ford F-350 truck was stolen outside his Winnipeg home in the early morning hours of February 2 without access to the keys.

“My son and I parked the truck in front of the house last night around eight or nine… We came out the next day at 11:30. We found it gone,” Fisher said.

“There is something wrong with this picture,” I thought. I looked at my son and said, “So where's my truck?” I said. He turned around. He could not understand. “Great,” he says.

Winnipeg police found the truck somewhere within city limits, Fisher said. But he said officers told him his tools inside the truck were missing.

Although he's excited to find his car, Fisher hasn't seen it yet because it's still in MPI's possession. He wasn't sure what condition she was in.

He thinks car thieves should be severely punished – partly because it's not easy to replace a car.

“It means a lot to me, you know, it's a truck,” Fisher said. Because you can't afford another one,” he says.

Lepak also hopes the federal government will step up.

“I think people who do this should be severely punished because now I'm out of the car.”