Sharp rise in jewellery store robberies across GTHA has legal experts calling for community level solutions

With a total of five smash-and-grab jewellery store robberies across the GTHA in the past week, legal experts say it’s time to look at the root cause of the issue when it comes to finding solutions.

The latest incident took place at Centrepoint Mall in North York on Friday night when thieves struck a Peoples Jewellers, smashing several display cases before getting away with an unknown quantity of product.

A week ago the Peoples Jewellers at Sherway Gardens in Etobicoke was robbed of several high-priced items while another Peoples Jewellers store was targeted at Hillcrest Mall in Richmond Hill, and another jewellery store was raided in Markville Shopping Centre.

Fast forward to Thursday in Ancaster, where Hamilton police say the driver of a truck reversed and crashed through the front window of Ancaster Jewellers. The suspects pointed a firearm at the store owner before smashing the display cases.

According to Toronto police, 43 jewellery store robberies have been reported this year, compared to 21 last year.

“This is a phenomenon that really relates to organized crime that is geared towards recruiting and inducting disaffected largely young males into committing sort of mob organized smash and grabs,” says Adam Boni, a criminal defence lawyer in Toronto.

Boni says these organized crimes are conducted with a few things in mind.

“If you’ve got seven or eight people committing the crime at the same time, targeting smaller, high-end items, more items are going to be able to be stolen. The second thing is more people involved, more distraction, more chaos, greater opportunity to evade mall security and police.”

Boni says more needs to be done to address the root cause of the issue as more young people are charged with serious offences.

“We are seeing a really concerning rise in the number of young people being involved in these types of offences and in large part there are economic drivers to that,” he explains. “I think we need to start doing a much better job of identifying at-risk youth and targeting them for programs that make this type of criminal behaviour not an option.”

Boni also says that more police and higher sentences only address one part of the problem. He suggests addressing the issue at the community and school level.

“We need to have a strategy that’s multi-pronged, deals that involves the retailers, mall security people, police, the prosecutors, and the system, the community, for trying to attack this type of organized criminal behaviour in a multifaceted way,” says Boni.