Swarm Shoplifting

[border_humper]

FIRST READING: The uniquely pernicious Canadian crime trend sweeping the country

Gang of thieves are now regularly walking into stores to calmly steal thousands of dollars of merchandise in plain sight

nationalpost.com

It’s arguably the most brazen symptom of a Canadian system that offers minimal consequences for crime: A group of thieves calmly walk into a store, fill their bags with thousands of dollars of high-value merchandise, and leave. This week in Huntsville, Ont., four men walked into a Home Depot, loaded up carts with $8,000 in power tools and exited without paying. Last month, video from a Dollarama from Regina suggested five shoplifters seemingly rushed in right after opening, filled their bags and walked out. Also in August, a group of four people outside a Safeway in Edmonton were allegedly caught on a viral video loading up a Mercedes SUV with an estimated $1,500 in stolen groceries.
In February, after a couple in Guelph, Ont., allegedly walked out of a liquor store with $1,000 in spirits, a local police spokesperson said such thefts had been happening every few days. “Over the last several months, there has been a noticeable increase in the number and size of these LCBO thefts,” Scott Tracey, media coordinator with the Guelph Police Service, told CityNews.

In a late August incident that was widely circulated on social media, six men entered a Kitchener, Ont., liquor store in late afternoon and nonchalantly filled bags with premium liquor before walking out without paying. The Waterloo Regional Police Service was able to circulate a substantial gallery of pictures of alleged suspects, since other patrons filmed it all with mobile phones.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford would specifically reference the Kitchener theft in a press conference, calling the men a “brazen bunch of crooks.”

These organized thefts have helped make shoplifting one of the fastest growing categories of Canadian crime.

A July data release by Statistics Canada found that shoplifting had increased 66 per cent between 2014 and 2024. There were 182,361 police-reported incidents in 2024 alone; an average of 500 per day.

And those are just the incidents getting reported.

Save Our Streets, a newly formed B.C. group pushing for reduced civic disorder, has often made the case that businesses are so demoralized by high crime that many have stopped reporting incidents.
“People have just given up on reporting these crimes because they know the police just don’t have the resources to do everything we’re asking them to do,” Save Our Streets co-founder Jess Ketchum told Global News in July.

As to why organized shoplifting is so pernicious in Canada, one factor is that the vast majority of shoplifters get away with it. B.C., for instance, charted 36,851 police-reported shoplifting incidents, but only 4,040 people charged.

And even if caught, the penalties for shoplifting – even of the organized high-value variety – are extraordinarily light.

Earlier this year, a serial shoplifter in Prince George, B.C., was handed 30 days of house arrest, with allowances to leave for work or medical appointments.

Brampton, Ont. man Satnampal Chawla was found to be the ringleader of a multi-million dollar shoplifting ring targeting major retailers and reselling the stolen goods on Amazon. He was ultimately handed six months of house arrest, with the judge wishing Chawla well in his new career as a real estate agent.

After an RCMP anti-shoplifting blitz in Langford, B.C., arrested 27 people, one third of those were immediately spared any criminal consequences. A police statement said they “met the criteria for Restorative Justice and were deferred away from the criminal justice system.”
In March, even a man who charged into a Vancouver London Drugs with a pipe and threatened to kill staff was given just a 60-day sentence.

“Perpetrators see little consequence for their actions within the justice system,” John Graham with the Retail Council of Canada told CTV in May.

The council has estimated that $9.1 billion was lost to shoplifting in 2024. For context, in that same year, the combined cost of running every police agency in the country was about $20 billion.

However, an unofficial response to the organized shoplifting trend has started to emerge: Security guards or members of the public taking the initiative to tackle and restrain organized shoplifting gangs before they can get away.

A recent web video shot at an LCBO in Etobicoke shows staff

This is a big problem in my area.

 

[d01tg0d0wn]

In my area we have a Boston Pizza with two security guards and rumors that is gonna shutdown soon. Our walmart moved because of theft. Pizza hut got shot up recently. So much for 15 min cities.

All the businesses have left. I now need to travel a great distance for groceries. Even the gas station a petro canada wont let people in after 7. Surviving businesses are nail salons and a hair cut place.

No swarm shop lifting yet. Possible swarm or mob house invasions. Keeping an eye out for that

Somehow houses in my area are 800 000 on average yet the businesses left

I hate this city

 

[brutana_dilewski]

But Connor McDavid.

 

[d01tg0d0wn]

I hope he lives in nicer area then i do and can get stuff he needs without steppin over homeless and drug addicts

 

[ovarieasy]

You live in a ghetto

You need to ghetto out of there

 

[d01tg0d0wn]

We (I) want to but work is so close for wife and myself. She is fighting me on the commute of living farther away. I tell her if your dead then what was/is the value of the convenience.

Like the lady on the bus that got killed wife cant see the danger or wont. I can see it and feel it

 

[Squishybear]

@d01tg0d0wn Curious if you don’t mind my asking. How long is her commute and does she drive a vehicle or does she take public transport?

 

[d01tg0d0wn]

@Squishybear drives to a heated underground parking garage 2 min away. Place is like fortknoxx for security to so she is pretty safe. Cameras everywhere.

 

[Squishybear]

@d01tg0d0wn Jebus. I can only dream.
I get to do a 3 hour roundtrip through the lower mainland!

 

[border_humper]

@d01tg0d0wn My commute in the city used to be 10 minutes and now it’s 40. Worth every minute to live in a neighbourhood where I feel safe.

 

[d01tg0d0wn]

@Squishybear that is what wife wants to avoid but i dont care. Maybe we could just dump everything and live small town. We are both near our mid 40s and it feels like all we do is work. City is so awful it feels lile gotham here. Kids are teens so they are gone soon.

 

[ovarieasy]

nignado
poonami

 

[416_Refugee]

Brampton, Ont. man Satnampal Chawla was found to be the ringleader of a multi-million dollar shoplifting ring targeting major retailers and reselling the stolen goods on Amazon. He was ultimately handed six months of house arrest, with the judge wishing Chawla well in his new career as a real estate agent.

JFC...