Westover: Surely we can stop teens from participating in car theft

If young people realized that helping steal a vehicle doesn’t just hurt the individual who lost their property but actually finances the destructiveness of organized crime, they might think twice.

Published Feb 17, 2024 • Last updated 1 day ago • 3 minute read

There isn’t a silver bullet to solve a challenge as complex and pervasive as car theft, but there are some things we can do to dissuade teens from helping criminals. Photo by Rattankun Thongbun /Getty Images/iStockphoto

Word travels fast. Especially on a small crescent in Barrhaven. The hot topic? Car theft.

Again.

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Our doorbell rang around two in the afternoon. It was a neighbour reporting a teen or young adult casing the street around 4:30 am, gliding his bicycle gliding up and down the driveways, pulling on car doors and peering in back windows.

Vehicles were stolen that night. “Two cars a couple streets over, two behind us, and three over that way,” our neighbour said, ticking off each missing vehicle on his fingers. We couldn’t fact-check his reporting but it sounded about right, given everything we know about thieves’ propensity for Ottawa’s southwest corner.

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In Barrhaven, we’re ideally located if you want to hop on a busy highway and race away with your ill-gotten gains to parts unknown.

My husband reviewed our own outdoor camera footage, and sure enough, though ill-lit and overexposed, we were able to watch the same fleet-of-foot trouble-maker yanking at the door of our SUV, glaring up at the camera, utterly indifferent to its intended purpose. We could make out a beard and approximate face shape, but little else.

He actually looked at the camera as if to challenge its very intended purpose. The message was clear: “What are you going to do about it?”

I often wonder about the teens who get roped into acting as scouts or lookouts, who do the initial casing on their innocuous-looking bicycles. They don’t do the stealing, or so I’m given to understand. Apparently its bigger, badder criminals who swoop in later to smash back windows and slither inside. I can’t help but think these kids might not get involved if they realized the extent to which they are supporting other, more nefarious crimes.

Stealing a car for its own purpose is one thing, but stealing vehicles to support organized crime is something else.

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Teen brains are underdeveloped and highly impulsive. But they are impressionable too. And perhaps that’s something the good guys can use to their advantage.

There isn’t a silver bullet to solve a challenge as complex and pervasive as car theft, but if we could show young people the real-world implications before they dip their toe in the morass of criminality, they might be unwilling to compromise their futures in service to nefarious thugs.

Maybe we should invite police or victims of car theft to speak at elementary and middle schools, or create some TikTok content that hits home. I remember as a young person seeing a “stop smoking” commercial that showed a beautiful girl aging in hyper-speed, becoming a hollow-cheeked, yellow-toothed horror, within a drag or two of her cigarette. Had I ever craved the imagined sophistication of a cigarette, that image cured me of it, and fast.

Similarly, if young people realized that car theft doesn’t just hurt the individual who lost their property — a seemingly “affluent” adult whom they assume can afford higher insurance premiums and organize temporary transport — but actually finances things far more destructive and distasteful than the ravages of smoking, they might think twice.

Weakening one link in the chain is a start. Adding an extra police presence at peak times (3 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. seems to be the neighbourhood consensus) wouldn’t hurt either.

But in the meantime, I spent Sunday making room for the car in the garage. For now, it’s the best answer I’ve got to “What are you going to do about it.”

Suzanne Westover is an Ottawa writer.

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