Catalytic converter thefts are up 60 per cent year over year in Canada, but all the attention focused on the thieves isn’t going to stop the problem.
The thieves are sad, desperate people. They are the lowest of low-level criminals. They are wire thieves and shoplifters and mail thieves, the sort of people who commit simple crimes that net them a few dollars. In most cases, of course, they’re doing it for money to buy drugs to feed an addiction.
The question is, who is buying these catalytic converters?
Every article on this problem notes that catalytic converters are targeted both because they are relatively easy to cut off target vehicles, and because they contain valuable platinum group minerals. Those metals can be smelted out by recyclers.
According to ICBC, just in the first half of 2022, there were 2,300 converters stolen in Metro Vancouver.
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That’s a lot of sad, desperate petty thieves. But it’s only one or two unscrupulous scrap merchants who are profiting by buying these stolen items – for pennies on the dollar – and making a financial killing by selling them along to recyclers.
So the question is who are these unethical scrap merchants who are acting as criminal fences on the side? We presume that most scrap yards aren’t accepting catalytic converters that are brought in off the streets, complete with suspicious hacksaw marks on them.
There are, unfortunately, too many desperate people who will keep stealing catalytic converters to ever arrest all of them. And throwing someone in jail for years for stealing something that netted them a few bucks would be unjust.
The people we need to target, as usual, are higher up the food chain. Regulation of metal recyclers and investigations that target the crooks making the most money could put a stop to the problem.
– M.C.