By Hedy Korbee
On a cold, snowy night between Christmas and New Year’s, Akito Inakazu came up from the basement of his Birch Cliff home and was surprised to see that his outdoor lights had been activated by the motion sensor.
“That’s kind of weird,” he thought, because it was close to midnight during the holidays.
Inakazu looked through the window and saw a man trudge through the snow on his driveway and approach his car. At that point he poked his head out the front door and said, “Can I help you?”
The man mumbled something unintelligible and when Inakazu raised his voice and said, “Excuse me?” the man shouted that he was looking for somewhere to pee and walked briskly back down the driveway.
Scenes similar to this attempted vehicle break-in are playing out all over Birch Cliff and the rest of southwest Scarborough with residents sharing their stories and their frustration on social media.
Birch Cliff News conducted an unscientific survey via Facebook, which resulted in scores of reports of break-ins.
Toronto Police said they don’t have any handy statistics on vehicle break-ins in the community, in part because people aren’t reporting it.
Responding to a question from Birch Cliff News, Thomas Cook, the neighbourhood officer for Birch Cliff, Cliffside and Cliffcrest looked through the vehicle entry reports from January to March.
“There are not many reports of theft from a vehicle within the Birchcliffe-Cliffside community. Only a few entries have been reported for the first two weeks of March,” Const. Cook said. “I would ask anyone that has had their vehicle entered, to report the incident to police so we can develop better statistics and enforcement for the area,” Cook said in an email.
Inakazu is one of those people who files reports and it helps that his house has a security camera. He works in IT and his security system is hard-wired, self-installed and quite sophisticated.
He caught images of the man in December and described him as between 5’6” and 5’8”with light-coloured stripes on the shoulders of his ski jacket, speaking with what sounded like a Hispanic accent.
Inakazu called the community number for Toronto Police 41 Division and they sent an officer to investigate.
“The police actually called me when the officer came into the area. He’s said I’m going to drive around the area and see if we can if we find anyone matching that description. He had some like stripes on his jacket that we’re pretty distinctive. I gave that to the police and they were going to try and find somebody. But who knows? I don’t know exactly what happened with that.”
Sally Talbot, who distributes a Neighbourhood Watch newsletter via email, also installed cameras outside her home last August.
When her neighbour across the street had his shed broken into he asked Talbot to check if her camera picked up the incident.
Sure enough, Talbot’s camera captured a women in her 30s or 40s, about 5’6” with shoulder length blonde hair, carrying a large bag.
She’s not sure if it’s the same person responsible for breaking into the neighbour’s shed but Talbot said the video shows her trying to open car doors.
Other Birch Cliff residents have posted security camera photos to social media of women with large bags trying to open car doors.
This security camera photo (left) was taken in the Kingston Rd. and Warden area on Feb. 9.
The woman, with reddish-brown hair was described on social media as working with a younger guy who walks ahead and tells her to check the doors.
The photo (right) is of a woman who broke into a car on Manderley a couple of years ago.
The person who posted it said the woman lives in the neighbourhood and police described her as someone with an addiction.
Talbot also contacted the police and posted this in her email newsletter:
“The thing the police stated is that when something happens we tend not to call them…BUT then they don’t know that there is any connection to other break-ins in the area…so calling and informing them does 2 things:
- informs the Police of activity in our neighbourhood
- When putting together a budget they know where to allocate funds for officers. Otherwise they think our little neighbourhood is just fine with no issues.”
Inakazu, who lives close to a busy road, had another incident with his car in mid-February and this time it was a break in. He had forgotten to lock the car door because he was returning from a shopping trip with his young daughter and his hands were full.
His security camera caught images of a man in his 40s returning to his vehicle three times in the middle of the night at 12:15am and 4am and then again 6:15am. His belongings were strewn all over the car and the thief took his diaper bag and a box of kleenex.
Cook also said that people are quite often arrested because of security footage, which provide evidence for investigators to identify suspects, place them at a location and a certain time and are also used during court proceedings.
That’s exactly what happened with Inakazu, whose cameras seem to be working overtime
In May 2017, his house was robbed by somebody who spent several minutes ringing the doorbell (staring straight into the camera) to check if anybody was home before entering through a window and then spent five minutes ransacking the house. Inakazu checked his computer and, sure enough, there was video that he provided to police. An officer on patrol recognized the robber and he was arrested.
A year prior to that a house was robbed across the street. His camera managed to pick up video of the thief and showed that he left the neighbourhood on the Cliffside 20 bus. Police approached the TTC for video footage from the bus and an arrest was made.
Despite a string of incidents, Inakazu is taking these events in stride and chalking it up to life in the big city.
“It’s one of those things. Unfortunately there’s all sorts of unscrupulous people out there that will take advantage if they can. And for the most part it’s pretty safe. It’s for the most part property, right? It’s not like you have to fear for your life because that would be a lot worse if you had to worry about people breaking in when people are home.”
Finally, Const. Cook has the following advice for Birch Cliff residents concerned about vehicle break-ins.
- Lock your car. Vehicles are often by-passed if they are locked.
- Keep valuables out of sight.
- There are some things residents can do to better prevent these entries from happening:
- Park vehicles off the street if at all possible.
- Enhance the exterior lighting on their homes by leaving on exterior lights, using motion sensor lighting, solar or path lighting, etc.
- Keep the front of their homes visible by pruning back trees, bushes and shrubs on their property.
- Exterior video cameras can be turned toward the driveways, front of homes, street areas to capture activity on the street and people near the vehicles parked on the street and driveways.
- Report any incidents to police by calling 416-808-2222 or using the online reporting system: https://www.torontopolice.on.ca/core/
- If suspicious activity is noticed, someone is pausing by vehicles, trying door handles or walking up and down driveways, call 9-1-1.
- Crimes can also be reported anonymously by using Crime Stoppers – 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS).
Hedy- really good article – thanks