Crime and Safety in Winnipeg 2022 Part 4

 

So what will work in short term, medium term and long term to make Winnipeg safer and have less crime? In the past, short term solutions have been to look at patterns of crime and for the police to pour resources into them. In the 1990s when things were very bad, the police and fire departments set up an arson task force. It was slow to set up, took a while to get going but eventually offenders were caught and arsons went down. Likewise, a car theft task force was set and repeat car thieves were caught and it went down as those who would not stop took on longer and longer sentences.

These things don't happen in a vacuum though. Before manufactured ignition locks people in Winnipeg used steering wheel locks, got alarms and along with the police task force, car thefts went down. From a police perspective good intelligence is needed to stay vigilant. The issues of stolen goods and pawn shops in the 1970s and 1980s saw various rules and laws put in place to root out the worst fronts for organized crime. Various studies have shown that a lot of the decline in property crime from the 1990s on was the result of it being harder to steal to cars or break into buildings.

Today, valuable car parts and printable guns could use an assist from provincial and federal levels by marking them for ID or making them illegal. Inspections of metal yards to determine providence. Record keeping and the ability to track down sales and customers. And consequences for stolen goods such as forfeiture of business. If someone has catalytic converters and there is no providence of how the parts came to be at a the shop, arrests and forfeiture of business should result. Likewise, bike parts, copper and car parts at a metal shop should al be traceable. The province of Manitoba has a private members bill to put serial numbers on converters only for the government to vote it down and re-introduce it. It is an intolerable waste of time and shows a lack of urgency.

A renewed effort is needed to make it harder to steal cars, break into cars and carjack cars. Serial numbers on parts, engine immobilizers, GPS emergency tracking, automatic door locks and alarms should be standard features. Metal recyclers need video record keeping and paperwork to prove providence of material and regular police or inspector visits. This would help with copper and bike thefts as well for metal sales. The above would certainly help police. For example, a carjacked car might be able to be shut down safely and police could apprehend suspects. Or a metal shop with a whole bunch of unaccounted for catalytic converters gets shut down and breaks the chain for people who steal them not having a market to sell them.

It should not be assumed that punishment is more effective than prevention. Punishment is not needed if the crime was prevented from happening in the first place! Federal and provincial governments can certainly assist in some of the above mention measures. Better border, port and postal inspections would help. It seems our federal Public Safety Ministers have been tied up with RCMP issues for years whether it is treatment of women, poor training, and a host of other things. Of particular concern is that that the RCMP has a job vacancy rate of over 4% and Manitoba has one of the worst job placements in Canada. It can be frustrating going from one crisis to another underpowered.