Achi news desk-
A day after a Montreal police officer fired shots at a suspect in a stolen car, senior officers told MPs that organized crime groups are recruiting people as young as 15 in the city to steal cars so they can be shipped overseas.
In some cases, the youths are tortured if things go wrong, according to Yannick Desmarais, a commander at the Montreal Police Service (SPVM).
“For us, we see these young people between the ages of 15 and 25, and we saw young people from Montreal [go] to Toronto to steal cars, and they even undergo torture in Toronto if they don’t succeed. So we feel it’s very important to work as a team,” Desmarais told the House Committee on Public Safety and National Security on Thursday.
MPs on a committee examining the “growing problem of car theft in Canada” have invited officials with the SPVM, the Sûreté du Québec (SQ), the Montreal Port Authority and other witnesses to testify.
The SPVM commander said that there is a connection between car theft and armed violence, and emphasized that this is not a victimless crime.
“We know that people who are regularly involved, when they are caught, have firearms. Our investigations and intelligence show that a lot of the money for firearms comes from carjacking operations,” he said, adding that the firearms were used. in violent crimes.
Yannick Desmarais, chief of the Montreal Police Service (SPVM), speaks to members of the House of Representatives Committee on Public Safety and National Security about the growing problem of car thefts on Thursday, April 18, 2024. (Source: House of Representatives)
While the car thieves are the ones the police are trying to target, what they are really hoping to catch are the exporters who are responsible for shipping the stolen vehicles overseas.
“Those who have connections with people on the ground. They are the ones who pull the strings. They are the ones who recruit and recruit the recruits,” said Michel Patenod, the SQ’s chief inspector. “I think that if we really want to have an impact and really want to dismantle and lower this crisis, we really need to go to the people who pull the strings and concentrate on the networks that export and lead and manage the contacts with people abroad. “
Stolen cars instead of refrigerators in containers
Earlier this month, nearly 600 stolen vehicles were located at the Port of Montreal after 400 shipping containers were inspected in a joint operation by the SPVM, the Canada Border Agency and other partners. Most of the cars were from the Toronto area.
Between mid-December and the end of March, police checked about 400 shipping containers at the Port of Montreal and found close to 600 stolen vehicles, most of them from the Toronto area. A container is loaded onto a container ship in the Port of Montreal on Tuesday, September 19, 2023. (Christine Muschi, The Canadian Press)
A Port Authority official told the committee that sometimes what is written on the manifest does not match what is inside. Félixpier Bergeron, Director of Port Protection and Business Continuity, gave an example of a manifest describing refrigerators in containers when they contain stolen cars.
“There is no one who signs and really says what is in the container. That’s all that was submitted on paper. It’s fraud. But how do you identify fraud? It’s something that should perhaps be checked in the liability regulations for the things inside the container,” he said.
The Port Authority is open to adding new technologies to track goods, such as X-ray machines to see what’s inside, but he said there are health considerations that need to be explored.
“It exists elsewhere in the world but in those places they don’t have the same commitment to human life that we have in Canada,” he said.
Currently, Port Authority searches of containers take time, but Bergeron said he is open to new solutions.
“It takes four to five minutes to scan each container,” he said. “So if we have 2,000 trucks a day entering the port in four minutes, it doesn’t work.”
