The Fairview shopping center, in west Montreal, has become the epicenter of car theft in Quebec, according to a new map compiled by our Bureau of Investigation.
• Also read: Justice gets tougher with car thieves
With 185 vehicles stolen in one year, the equivalent of one every two days, it even exceeds the parking lot at Montreal-Trudeau airport, although it is very popular with thieves.
AND AT YOUR HOME?
Is your municipality often the target of car thieves?
Find out on this map compiled by our Investigation Office, which allows you to locate down to the street, in certain cities, where thousands of vehicles have been stolen in Quebec since the start of the year.
Municipality (number of flights)
Number of flights to the same address
Methodology
This map of vehicle thefts on the territory of Quebec covers the period from June 1, 2023 until a date between July 31 and October 21, depending on the city.
For the City of Montreal, the data is from September 18 to October 18 and for Quebec, from September 1, 2023 to October 21, 2024.
The data comes from the Sûreté du Québec, the police service of the City of Montreal, the city of Laval, the city of Longueuil, the police service of the City of Gatineau, the police service of the city of Quebec , from the police service of the city of Lévis, from the police service of Sherbrooke, from the city of Blainville, from the police service of Châteauguay, from the police service from the city of Mascouche, from the city of Granby, from the city of Trois-Rivières, the police department of the city of Bromont, the police department of Lac des Deux-Montagnes, the police department of Memphrémagog, the police department of the city of Saint-Eustache and the police department Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu police. Some were obtained through access to information.
Note that municipalities may have included vehicles such as motorcycles, trucks or boats in their balance sheet. As for location data, it was transmitted to us in different forms: postal code, street corner, street or neighborhood.
Data compilation: Charles Mathieu and Philippe Langlois, Investigation Office
Design : David Lambert
Integration, data visualization: Cécilia Defer
And this, even if the land of the shopping center is not even one square kilometer.
“I actually say a prayer every time I park there,” says Samantha Brown, owner of a black Jeep Wrangler.
To her amazement, the Montrealer had her vehicle stolen during a shopping trip with her daughter at the Fairview, one Friday afternoon last March.
Photo Agence QMI, JOËL LEMAY
The criminals managed to leave with his Jeep in broad daylight, while the parking lot was packed.
“There were no shards of glass on the floor, it really looked like professional work,” says the woman who eventually found her property thanks to AirTags.
In the last year, 185 vehicles were stolen from the CF Fairview Pointe Claire purchasing center, in the west of the island. It is located very close to the Metropolitan highway.
Photo The Journal
Less than one square kilometer
If the number of car thefts fell by 36% in Quebec between January and July according to Équité Association, criminals still claim hundreds of victims each month.
The map that we compiled from access to information requests shows that they continue to operate in the four corners of Quebec, and particularly in Montreal.
Several factors can explain why the Fairview shopping center has become the new hot spot in the province, according to Jacques Lamontagne, director of investigations at Équité Association, which carries out investigations on behalf of insurers.
He mentions the diversity of vehicles available in shopping centers, the more high-end models of customers from the west of the island, and the proximity to Highway 40 which allows a quick escape.
Overwhelmed police officers
The general manager of CF Fairview Pointe Claire, Lynn Fitzpatrick, assures that she takes the safety of her clients and tenants seriously given the increase in thefts on her property.
Guards conduct regular patrols outside and management is collaborating with authorities on this matter, she wrote.
However, one of our sources at the SPVM, not authorized to speak publicly, affirms that the police officers at the neighborhood station are overwhelmed by the scale of the task.
“Most of the thefts at the Fairview are captured on camera, but the video recordings are not even processed because there are so many that the investigations do not provide,” she says.
Obviously, the bandits took note of these shortcomings.
–With the collaboration of Charles Mathieu, Philippe Langlois and Marc Sandreschi
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