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> What happened to the shipping container? Who owned the rural property? Where was the shipping container going?

Everyone's going to feign ignorance. The container owner will say they didn't realize the container had been stolen from their property, or they rented it to someone who's responsible for whatever they do with it.

The property owner will say they didn't give anyone permission to put a container there, or that they rented it to someone else.

The destination can be just a port, and a moving company can be hired to pick up the container from the port.

(Source: my spouse shipped a lot of stuff from China, and I was horrified at how little security and documentation was involved. I can see how cars cross borders so easily.)

There’s no need to invent some pro-crime society narrative, it just took time to investigate:

https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/project-mamba-york-police...

Some DA's are absolutely pro crime and you find out its the same small number of ppl stealing cars and getting released after charges are dropped or reduced after they've gotten caught.

That's some answers. It's surprising that the NYtimes article didn't at least say they ultimately arrested 11 people and recovered almost 100 vehicles. Though it's also surprising they don't give an idea of the scale, either (over 11,000 carjackings a year, not mentioned in either article).

It's good they finally, in one city (Montreal has a similar problem), caught a theft ring. But this success just highlights the lack of action against crime that has scaled up to a business.

Bicycle theft at scale - easy to find on Craigslist in any college town, corrupt ramp employees at airports steal from checked bags, etc. This stuff is obvious. Yet it goes on and on.

Are police resources unbalanced and if a patrol cop can't bluster his way to an arrest it just doesn't happen? Are cops themselves too corrupt and afraid that overtime and detail fraud would start being investigated? What keeps economically significant crime in business?

I had to laugh at the photos of "high end luxury vehicles" - Subarus.

I'm putting my tinfoil hat on but this is my theory as an American.

Post 9/11, the Western world became obsessive over a sense of security and we've accepted it as a fact of life. To the point where we accept the TSA at airports without complaint, we accept nationwide surveillance, we operate on the internet with an innate understanding that "someone" at the government is watching everything we're doing. We accept these because we've been conditioned to believe that these tactics keep us safe.

As a lot of the population grows up and never experienced a pre-9/11 world, the government, police unions, etc have to ensure that these overbearing "security" tactics have a reason. Therefore, we highlight these "in your city" local crimes to provide validation for what they're doing.

This results in a unique combination of oppressive policing and incompetence at dealing with any crime that requires investigation. Police don't follow the fiction of police procedurals, they wander around blindly looking for "suspicious" people or rifling through people's stuff.

> Therefore, we highlight these "in your city" local crimes to provide validation for what they're doing.

Except time and again they seem To only be highlighting their own ineptitude at keeping anyone safe. Their budgets keep increasing yet it doesn’t seem to lead to any measurable improvement in KPIs.

I understand and generally agree with your sentiment but people are safer. Violent crime is down substantially since 2001 and even more since 1990s.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...

Supisingly, so are motor vehicle thefts. Though, they are on the rise since the pandemic.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/191213/reported-motor-ve...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/191216/reported-motor-ve...

So, KPI wise you can make an argument that it is effective. I may not agree with that argument in that we (USA) spend a lot of money and impose a lot of restrictions on the general population to get there.

Crime has always been a "the sky is falling" kind of a thing even if it's literally one crime. We are more safe than we were in 2001 by any objective measure, whether or not that is "safe enough" is going to be different for everyone...

> Violent crime is down substantially since 2001 and even more since 1990s.

Is it down because of police action or because of changing demographics?

That's the whole point. "We position police as arbiters of peace and safety and they need our support and more money to defeat the evildoers of our great city!"

We do the same with the American military and you'd get called a commie leftist Anti-American snowflake if you even breathe a word about reducing the military budget, even though this 40+ year "Way On Terror" seems like a dud.

I don't have access to the article, but what makes them so pro-crime?

You may be over simplifying things. If you set up some bait cars and catch some thieves, they will probably just be replaced with other low level men. This is likely organized crime so the leaders aren't out there prowling the neighbourhoods. As for the rural property, it might not even be theirs. It could just be any rural property. Ontario, being the most populous of Canadian provinces is still very sparsely populated. A short drive from most big cities can put you in a rural area where owners haven't visited a property in decades.

> If you set up some bait cars and catch some thieves, they will probably just be replaced with other low level men

This is a maddening learned helplessness. In some cities the majority of crime is done by less than 100 people. You can find dozens of examples of this, eg purse thefts in the 90's being one person, or 90% of bike theft being attributed to 11 people. Both anecdotes: https://twitter.com/AnechoicMedia_/status/176177303735813354...

Claiming that new people will magically spring up to take their place is nonsensical, so long as the punishment is not letting them go 5 hours later, as it is in some cities. There is no reason to believe that prosecuting crime will not lower crime and it is fabulous to believe that.

"If you set up some bait cars and catch some thieves, they will probably just be replaced with other low level men"

Put them in prison for 10 years first offense. 2nd offence, 15 years and so on. Eventually you run out of people willing to spend decades of their lives in prison to steal a CRV. Set bail at $15k.

> If you set up some bait cars and catch some thieves, they will probably just be replaced with other low level men.

What is currently preventing you from taking up the mantle of car thief? Is it simply that some else is already doing it?

Does this not work for you?: https://archive.ph/BUjPI

Actually recruiting criminals is not that easy. Most people aren’t looking to be criminals, especially when crime doesn’t pay.

> A concerted team of less than 50 people

That is, by public service terms, staggeringly expensive.

Another hidden variable in this is police competence. There's a naive assumption that more budget will give better results, but in practice it turns out that there is a lot of basic sloppiness and indifference to "petty" crime. Usually bicycles, not whole cars.