I think they are already. There have been examples here where chop shops, essentially, have been set up and the thefts have been much more organized. It's not just your commonplace “break the ignition column”; they're much more intelligently planned.
We're very vulnerable to that here in Winnipeg, as in any scenario where there's organized crime and crime for profit. As well, we have a fairly significant base of offenders who are very willing to steal vehicles and would certainly be a tool to be utilized by organized crime.
Our experience thus far with respect to immobilizers has been that they have made a difference, but I would say to the committee that the investigators in our auto theft strategy unit have found that it's the old adage: 5% of the people are doing 95% of the crime. We did track that, and what we found is that when a great number of our top auto thieves were on the street, auto theft skyrocketed, despite the presence of immobilizers; they just found other targets to go to. When more of them were incarcerated, the rates came back down.
If you talk to any auto theft investigator, they would attribute it to the very, very intense monitoring of those offenders. The difficulty, of course, is that right now they may be doing it for their own purposes, but certainly they would be a willing tool in the hands of, say, more sophisticated types of criminals, who would certainly be engaged in the crime-for-profit aspect. We would be particularly vulnerable here.
We have that dubious distinction. We've also had the dubious distinction of being the murder capital of Canada as well. We are definitely in the trenches and at the point of the spear. We have some very unique insight in that way. I wish we didn't, but we do. I would say, certainly from our perspective, there has to come a point where we need to make sure there's a significant deterrent, or if not a deterrent, then at least incarcerate those offenders so that we do have a chance to catch our breath.
Thank you.