Surrey, B.C., car theft capital
By Amy Carmichael, Canoe News, Press, Feb 16, 2004

VANCOUVER - During the morning rush, a frustrated local mayor was stopping drivers, begging for help in beating down the appalling number of car thefts in suburban Surrey. Mayor Doug McCallum wants the provincial government to send repeat offenders to work camps in the forest. Anyone who was willing to back him up were bestowed with a free club steering wheel lock. Drivers in the city just south of Vancouver are the most vulnerable in North America to having their cars stolen, according to the RCMP. An amazing 8,042 vehicles were stolen in the suburban city last year and up to 15 are taken per day, said the force.

Mayor Doug McCallum isn't going to take it anymore. He said Monday he's going to war against car thieves and is determined to convince the government to ship them off to work camps in the forest. "I personally asked the provincial government to send repeat offenders away for two years to forestry camps to help plant trees and at the same time get some education, so when they re-enter society they have some skills to get a job. "It's gone over as an excellent idea and we're pushing it very hard with the provincial government. Among the public, support is 110 per cent."

RCMP Const. Tim Shields said police enforcement isn't enough to quell the problem and was glad to have the mayor's help. He sees car thieves walk in and out of court every day and said car theft will continue to be an "epidemic" in pockets of Greater Vancouver until the public fights back or stiffer sentences are introduced. "We know we are arresting the same car thieves over and over again. Most of them are hard core repeat offenders."

The police and the city are holding a community forum this week to try to generate some new ideas on how to stop car theft. Already, neighbourhood watch programs are sponsored by the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia and the police have dedicated a plainclothes unit to tail known thieves and try to catch them in the act. The most imaginative deterrent so far has been the so-called bait car, a success in Hamilton, Ont., where police leave a car outfitted with a global positioning device in a high risk area to lure and catch criminals. McCallum is fuming that despite all these efforts, the problem has only gotten worse in the past year. "There's a lot of frustration in our community over the fact that the car thieves go through the courts like revolving doors. So we're working hard with the solicitor general to get sentencing up." Meanwhile, the cost of the rampant car thefts is pushing up insurance premiums. For each vehicle stolen, ICBC averages $4,000 in costs. The problem really spiked in the mid 1990s, costing the corporation $1.1 billion between 1996 and 2002. McCallum has set a goal to reduce vehicle theft by 30 per cent in the next year, something police say will go a long way toward cutting crime across Vancouver. Cars are usually ripped off by criminals who use them to carry out robberies, drug deals or to make an escape, said Shields.

About 85 per cent of them are abandoned and recovered. "We know the average car thief is an adult who usually steals cars to help commit secondary crimes - break-ins, armed robberies - and usually one common denominator with most car thieves is that they're a drug user," said Shields. "Obviously, drugs, which are a symptom of organized crime, are what is fuelling our auto theft epidemic."

Shields said many people don't realize how rampant the problem of car theft is in the Vancouver area. Most think their cars are too old to be a target, but he said people need to be far more vigilant because vehicle thieves "will steal anything." Here is a list of the most stolen cars in the area: Honda Civic, Dodge Caravan, Toyota Camry, Plymouth Voyager, Honda Accord, Jeep Cherokee, Toyota Pick-Up, Oldsmobile Cutlass, Honda Prelude, Acura Integra.

Go to 4.Old World Destruction and RUSSIA 1917 TO 1939

JOURNEY THROUGH RUSSIA, by Whiting Williams, Answers Magazine, February 1934
...But the worst memory I have brought out of Russia is the children...Something like 18,000 children were abandoned...These bands of wild children are not a new phenomenon in Russia. In the early days of the Revolution they were found even in Moscow itself. Then they disappeared - we were told that they had been rounded up and placed in homes, where they would be cared for and educated and made into good citizens. I saw some of the wild children of this winter being rounded up. A horse-drawn wagon lumbered along the street, with two or three policemen marching beside it. When they saw one of the little Ishmaels the police gave chase. If the youngster was caught, he was placed among the others already in the wagon, and this procession moved on again. Once, when the wagon stopped and a chase was in progress, two of the lads previously captured saw their chance, scrambled to the ground, and made off as hard as they could into a maze of narrow alley-ways. I felt rather sorry for these youngsters, running back to the hardship and hunger of their life in the gutter, when, as I thought, they would have been fed and clad and educated in the institution to which they were being taken. But when I mentioned this to a Russian acquaintance he just stared at me. At first I could not believe what he told me. Then I spoke to a number of other people. They all said the same thing. These children were not sent to homes. Bread was too scarce. They were put into railway wagons and unloaded out in the open country – too far out for it to be possible to walk back to town. And once, at least, three wagons filled with youngsters were shunted into a siding and forgotten for three days. When, at the end of that time, someone found them, not one of the children remained alive...

WORDS OF WARNING TO AMERICA, by Aleksandr L. Solzhenitsyn

NO ESCAPE FOR GULAG PRISONERS and COZY DAYS IN STALIN'S KREMLIN and POLICE STATE OF UNION and CANADA COPS UNLEASHED and CANADA'S DEBAUCHERY and SOVIET GULAG'S HAUNTING LEGACY and COMMUNISM CUBAN STYLE and COMMUNIST CRIMES EXPOSED and STALIN: KOBA THE DREAD II and STALIN: KOBA THE DREAD I

DRUG WAR & PEACE and MAFIA MOGULS and UNDER-WORLD SURFACING