Canadian cops advise car owners to leave keys at their front door so thieves can steal without confrontation

At an Etobicoke community safety meeting last month, Toronto Police Service Constable Marco Ricciardi told attendees "To prevent the possibility of being attacked in your home, leave your fobs at your front door, because they're breaking into your home to steal your car. They don't want anything else."

Auto theft is so bad in Toronto that people have even left notes on their car windows to inform would-be thieves that the doors were unlocked, hoping that the windows wouldn’t be smashed in.

According to blogTo, Toronto police had previously launched a campaign that told criminals how long they would have to finish a crime (an average of 22 minutes) before police would respond. The move was reportedly an attempt to prevent budget cuts.

Auto theft in Toronto has become so prevalent that The New York Times reported that an owner of a Honda CR-V who, to deter thieves, installed two alarm systems, a tracking device, four AirTags, and kept the key fob in a signal-jamming Faraday bag.

The owner’s home also has two motion-sensor floodlights pointed at his driveway which features a parking bollard. When the car is parked, he puts boot-style locks on all four wheels in addition to a steering wheel club, even in the driveway, to keep it from being stolen.