A Toronto couple recovered their stolen car by themselves after claiming that officers didn’t show up for hours to the location where they tracked it down.
Jonathan Orlando told City News that he was staying at his parents’ house in East York in late April when he woke up and discovered his vehicle was stolen. He reported it to the police, who responded to the home five hours later.
“Their only advice was to try and find ways to track it down; one suggestion was to download Sirius Radio, which could locate it, which I did,” Orlando said. The Toronto resident then remembered that he could use the Acura mobile app — it showed that his car was in a parking lot in Etobicoke.
He and his partner, Jake Windsor, called the police to let them know they had located it, before making their way to the location. They arrived at 2 p.m. that same day and waited for about eight hours. To their surprise — the police didn’t show up.
Orlando told City News they tried to flag down police cars driving by, but no one would stop for them.
The couple was concerned that the car was placed in a secondary drop-off location as part of a car theft ring—the thieves had deactivated the keys and placed a club lock on the wheel, so they called the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA).
Orlando said that because the keys were deactivated, and they had a steering wheel lock on it, they couldn’t put the car in neutral, so CAA had to call in a flatbed truck to tow it.
They called the police again to say CAA was about to tow their car away. They offered to have the car towed to the local police division but were told that they wouldn’t receive it. So the couple said they would tow it to the dealership, only to receive a call back from the police, confusingly telling them to bring it to the division.
At that point, the couple said that their car was already on the way to the dealership. So, they provided the dealership’s address and told police that it would be there in 15 minutes — but no one followed up until the next day.
Orlando was told by the dealership, that the officer didn’t even look at the vehicle: “They just verified that it was there.”
The Toronto Police Service told City News’ Speakers Corner that the TPS has a tiered response system in place where they assess calls on a priority matrix based on the threat, risk and harm posed to the victim and public.
They added that an officer responded reasonably quickly to the initial call in East York when Orlando reported his vehicle was stolen, but when the couple located their car in another division, the officers there were dealing with other higher-priority calls that day, including assaults, a stabbing, multiple calls for people in crisis and numerous break and enters.
“[TPS] does not take vehicle thefts lightly, and we do send officers as quickly as we can to recover stolen vehicles; however, calls involving public safety always take priority,” the spokesperson told City News.
According to the TPS, more than 3,500 cars have been stolen in Toronto so far this year. Police also revealed that within the first three months of 2024, Toronto has seen more than double the number of carjackings compared to this time last year.
Still, Orlando and Windsor are waiting for an update on their investigation. The couple believes that the TPS doesn’t have the resources to take on the volume of thefts.
To disrupt networks responsible for high-risk auto thefts, the Provincial Carjacking Joint Task Force (PCJTF), which is a collaborative leadership between the Toronto Police Service and the Ontario Provincial Police, was set up last September. As of January this year, their efforts have led to 89 arrests, the recovery of 109 vehicles, and 554 charges laid.