We mapped Toronto auto thefts. Here are the hardest-hit areas.

More than 8,700 vehicles were stolen in Toronto in 2022, with a disproportionate amount from the west side of the city.

Toronto auto thefts are on the rise — and not in a marginal way.

According to recently released Toronto Police Service data, thefts rose for the sixth straight year in 2022, jumping 46 per cent from 5,945 in 2021 to 8,705 this past year. That equates to roughly 24 per day, and is easily the highest number in the open database, which dates back to 2014.

This data came out shortly before news broke on Project Stallion, the ongoing Toronto Police auto theft investigation, which thrust the upward trend even further into the spotlight. As of an April 26 news conference, the investigation had resulted in the recovery of 556 stolen vehicles worth more than $27 million, and 314 charges laid against 119 people.

According to police, thieves use highly sophisticated methods to steal vehicles, then use those vehicles to carry out other crimes or ship them overseas, where they are resold.

“Vehicle theft and its impact on violent crime is a growing issue in Toronto, and it can seriously compromise a victim’s personal safety and well-being,” said TPS Superintendent Ron Taverner, 22 and 23 District Commander. “Toronto Police take these crimes seriously.”

Detective Sergeant Peter Wehby of the Organized Crime Investigative Support Team (OCIS) went on to say this issue extends far beyond the confines of our city and even the Greater Toronto Area.

“The spike in auto thefts that we are seeing is not exclusive to the GTA,” he said. “This is now a provincial, national, and even international problem.”

While police continue to work towards recovering stolen vehicles and holding those who commit these crimes to account, we can also peruse the info they’ve made available as a way of learning more about the problem.

To help with that, we visualized the latest set of TPS open data. Interact with the map accompanying this article to see thefts by area, and read on for our key takeaways.

Note: The map’s default view features 2022 data. Tap the legend icon — an eye with sparkles around it — to switch years.

Key takeaways

Here are a handful of observations on the latest batch of Toronto auto theft data:

• Unlike with bike thefts, downtown is not a particularly hard-hit area for auto thefts. Instead, a disproportionate amount come from Toronto’s western edge.
• The hardest-hit individual neighbourhood by a long shot is West Humber-Clairville, with 672 thefts — nearly eight per cent of all thefts in the city. The area is bordered by Highway 407 in the north, Highway 427 in the west, Highway 401 in the south, and Kipling Ave. and Martin Grove Rd. in the east.
• Other neighbourhoods that saw an abundance of thefts include York University Heights (196 thefts), Yorkdale-Glen Park (176), and Etobicoke City Centre (162).
• A whopping 88 thefts are tied to the intersection of Yorkdale Rd. and Highland Hill — just south of Yorkdale Mall. That’s the highest number attached to a single intersection point in the 2022 database.
• The overall picture changes slightly if we look at thefts per square kilometre. By that measure, the hardest-hit area is Yonge-Doris in North York — a narrow vertical strip just east of Yonge, between Finch Ave. and Sheppard Ave. Here, 0.0741 vehicles were stolen per square kilometre in 2022. For context, that’s more than three times higher than West Humber-Clairville (0.0223), a much larger area.
• Other areas ranking unfortunately high in this metric in 2022 include two in Toronto’s downtown core — Wellington Place (0.0632 thefts/sq. km) and Downtown Yonge East (0.0519).
• On the opposite end of the spectrum, four neighbourhoods saw fewer than 10 thefts each: Guildwood (7 thefts), Blake-Jones (8), and Dufferin Grove and North Toronto (9 each).
• Guildwood has the fewest thefts per square kilometre as well, with a minuscule 0.0018. Others that fall below the 0.003 threshold include Hillcrest Village (0.0026 thefs/sq. km) and St. Lawrence-East Bayfront-The Islands (0.0029).
• In terms of individual location types that see the most thefts, two stand way out in front. Thefts categorized in the database as “outside” (4,278 thefts) and “house” (3,271) easily lead the pack, not to mention accounted for the bulk of the year-over-year rise in thefts.
• While each category saw at least a marginal rise from 2021, transit and educational locations remained the least likely for auto thefts, with 26 and eight thefts, respectively.

How can drivers prevent auto thefts?

As part of the Project Stallion press conference, TPS released a list of things that Torontonians can do to protect their vehicles from theft.

For starters, police recommend drivers lock their car doors and close their windows, park indoors or in a well-lit area whenever possible, and remove all valuable items before leaving. They also advise removing FOBs and placing them in a Faraday container to avoid them getting cloned.

Other measures include audible alarms, theft-deterrent decals, steering wheel locks, ignition kill switches, and tracking devices.

For more information, click here to check out the auto-theft prevention page on the TPS website.

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Code and markup by Kyle Duncan. ©Torontoverse, 2023