Worried about car theft? Ford government says five new helicopters will help — but experts say ‘they’re not the end all, be all’

But choppers can be a tool to help track stolen cars or criminals without having to resort to dangerous high-speed chases.

Helicopters are used by police forces in major cities around the world, and are “a highly valuable asset to put at the disposal of law enforcement,” said Christian Leuprecht, a professor at both Queen’s University and Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston.

With a growing population in the Greater Toronto Area, and traffic gridlock, having eyes in the sky will “prove effective and efficient and will also, as the recent high-speed chases show, save lives — because with the availability of a helicopter, you have options that you simply don’t have if all you have to rely on are assets on the ground,” said Leuprecht, an expert in intelligence and defence.

“I mean, every day, you can think of an incident in Toronto where it would have been helpful to have air assets.”

On Monday, Premier Doug Ford announced the funding to help combat auto thefts, carjackings, street racing and impaired driving. 

The province’s spring budget provided funding to lease four helicopters, but this new money will see Ontario instead purchase five choppers and cover ongoing operating costs.

This “will be a massive boost for community safety,” Ford said.

Two helicopters will be purchased for the Ontario Provincial Police to work with the Ottawa and Toronto police, and three helicopters will be purchased and operated by Durham, Halton and Peel police.

“In Ontario, a car is stolen every 14 minutes — this is completely unacceptable,” said Solicitor General Michael Kerzner. 

Some of the funds for the new helicopters were announced in the Ford government’s March budget, and are in addition to funding for the OPP’s auto theft team.

Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie blamed the government for inaction on auto theft, saying “Doug Ford has been premier for over six years. In that time, he has failed to tackle auto thefts and keep Ontario families safe.”

Western University Prof. Laura Huey, a criminologist who focuses on policing, said the public does not want police to engage in high-speed chases – which can lead to deadly outcomes, including one recent incident in Durham that killed four, including a baby and his grandparents — but citizens also want something to be done about the massive car-theft problem.

“So there’s only two other solutions, and one is fairly new and untried,” Huey said. “Those solutions are helicopters and drones.”

While “New York is experimenting with drones, the issue is the same, people that don’t want the cops to chase” also don’t like the loss of privacy that comes with drones. 

“Then that leaves you with one solution, which is helicopters,” which she said are better “relative to us doing nothing.”

Currently in the GTA, two helicopters are in use and shared with other police forces. 

Mike Arntfield, a criminologist author and professor at Western University, said there isn’t a lot of peer-reviewed Canadian research on the usefulness of helicopters, apart from a study more than two decades ago with the London police use of a helicopter, where he was an officer at the time. 

Other, older studies also found that helicopters aided with “successful apprehensions of suspects with minimal risks to the public.” They also give police “superior tactical advantage,” he added.

Given they have been used by various police forces in North America for 80 years, “decades of best practices have been established, and they allow for real-time communications between the observer or the pilot on board, and ground units” which unmanned drones can’t provide.

Wilfrid Laurier University Prof. Scott Blandford, the school’s policing and public safety program co-ordinator, was also a London officer during the helicopter project.

He said operations and maintenance funding are key, given how costly helicopters can be.

Helicopters, he added, are “good, but they’re not the end all, be all. They are a tool — they are just another resource that can be used,” but have the advantage of avoiding traffic gridlock.

“The availability of the helicopter at any given time is a key factor in how effective they are” as is co-ordination with ground units, he said. “Once they are in the air, and they’re aware of a hot spot, they can get to it much quicker. They then become a surveillance (tool), but that’s all they are. They’re not an interdiction.”

“It’s not going to suddenly end street racing,” he said, especially in the age of social media where those events spring up spontaneously and are over quickly.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada says that in Ontario, the Greater Toronto Area holds almost all of the top spots when it comes to auto theft claims, with huge increases in recent years.

Toronto is at the top, followed by Brampton, Mississauga, Vaughan and Markham, Ottawa, Oakville, Richmond Hill, Hamilton and London.

Liam McGuinty, the bureau’s vice-president of strategy, said there’s been a real focus on combating auto theft, but Ottawa must also play a larger role in enacting its national action plan. Auto manufacturers need to modernize their vehicle anti-theft technologies.

“We’ve got to put more emphasis on preventing cars from being stolen,” said McGuinty. “And our view, and many others, is that regulating a standard that auto manufacturers have to live up to is the best and most effective way to do that” and has proved successful in the past.