Toronto area break-ins rob families of more than money
Families lose sleep, sense of security after thieves invade their space
When Rita Odjaghian learned that dozens of pieces of jewelry, including priceless heirlooms, were stolen from her bedroom, she felt as though she was grieving her long-lost relatives all over again.
In July, Odjaghian and her husband fell victim to a common crime: a break-in. Thirty-seven pieces of jewelry were stolen from their Richmond Hill home, including her late father's Rolex and her great-grandmother's gold bracelet watch that Odjaghian's own mother passed down to her on her wedding day.
"In life, you lose people," Odjaghian told CBC News last week.
"So you're getting that grief of separation. But once I lost all this jewelry, I don't know how to describe it, but it was a very special grief. It was like losing them again."
For Odjaghian, the loss of the bracelet watch was particularly painful. Her great-grandmother had smuggled it out of Russia in the 1950s when the family fled the communists and settled in Iran.
When Odjaghian left Iran decades later she, like her great-grandmother before her, had to "do some creative work" to take the jewels with her.
Her parents and grandparents always told her not to sell the jewelry, and she planned to give her own daughter the watch as a wedding gift.
"However, this didn't happen. I passed it on to a bunch of thieves," Odjaghian says.
Low clearance rates
While break-ins are on the decline across the GTA, thousands still occur every year. They rob families not only of cash, jewels, electronics and other goods, but also their sense of safety in their own homes.
On top of that, the victims rarely get justice. Break and enters have a poor "clearance" – or solve – rate. Throughout the various jurisdictions in the GTA, clearance rates hover between 20 and 25 per cent.
Break-ins by region:
- Durham: 1,595 annually (based on a five-year average); Clearance rate: 20 to 30 per cent.
- Peel: 3,666 annually (based on a four-year average); Clearance rate (based on a four-year average): 24.7 per cent.
- York: 1,846 in 2014; Clearance rate: 21.9 per cent.
- Toronto: 7,980 (based on five-year average); Clearance rate (based on a five-year average): 24.4 per cent.
"You felt like your house was invaded," Odjaghian said. "The house is not a private sanctuary anymore. I can't leave anything at home."
'Really creepy'
That's how Heidi, who didn't want her last name used in order to protect the privacy of her children, feels after her home was broken into last summer.
One sunny Sunday afternoon, thieves used a stone that her children had painted to look like a ladybug to shatter the glass on the back door of their Cabbagetown home.
"It was definitely a professional, not a smash-and-grab," she told CBC. "They came in laser-focused on what they were looking for."
The thieves went through every drawer in every room, and the contents were left strewn all over the floor. They made off with jewelry that was one day to go to the children, as well as electronics, gift cards and cash, including the kids' piggy banks.
The family was traumatized, and the thieves have not been caught.
Since the break-in, the children have slept in the same room in bunk beds. The family also got a dog.
"The whole idea of your personal space being violated, that's really creepy," she said.
Break-ins hard to solve
York Regional Police Det.-Sgt. Don Cardwell says break-ins are difficult to solve because the trends around the crime have changed. It used to be, for example, that addicts were breaking into homes to grab cash and goods to feed their habit.
Now, organized crime groups are using sophisticated techniques and tools to outsmart investigators.
Roving gangs of foreign nationals, who aren't known to local law enforcement, will move from city to city to stay under police radar. They also use the latest tech tools to do everything from disabling home alarm systems to scrambling cellphone signals so witnesses can't call police.
Thieves also rarely leave behind DNA evidence.
"I don't know how much in resources you can dedicate to the problem, but there is a trend here. This is the same people committing the same offences over and over again," Cardwell said.
"If we were better at dealing with these same groups, we'd probably have a better success rate."
'Those memories are shattered'
Her husband had called police right after he got home from running an errand that morning and discovered the jewelry gone.
But so far, no arrests have been made and the jewelry may be gone forever.
"The whole loss was not only the financial loss, but these were gold jewels coming from my family, from my grandmother, from my dad. Two, three generations back there, and each piece had a story behind it, it had a memory," Odjaghian said.
"So all those memories are shattered now."
On Tuesday, we'll go back to the York police break-in squad to learn about the new type of thieves, and the techniques they use to outsmart homeowners and investigators.