A recent count prepared by the RCMP shows that police forces and other government agencies have lost 813 firearms, including 173 to theft, since 2005.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
As gun violence surges on Toronto streets, city police are searching for an RCMP-issued sidearm stolen from a west-side mall earlier this week, a new addition to the hefty arsenal of government firearms that have gone missing in recent years.
The Toronto Police Service warned the public on Friday that a Smith & Wesson nine-millimetre pistol bearing the RCMP’s horse-and-rider insignia had been stolen from a plainclothes officer in the Sherway Gardens shopping mall, located in the city’s western Etobicoke borough.
The loaded pistol was concealed along with three full magazines and a police radio inside a black satchel designed to be used by plainclothes officers, who often can’t carry a sidearm openly.
“He had it in the proper spot,” police spokesman Victor Kwong said. “Unfortunately, those satchels are not stuck to your body the whole time, as a holster is with a uniformed cop.”
Police say all the items went missing between 7:30 and 9:45 p.m. on Wednesday night. Toronto police were called in shortly after 10 p.m.
Investigators are hopeful the thief was a would-be purse snatcher who ditched the satchel when they realized there was no wallet inside.
On Toronto streets, however, handguns are as valuable as anything found inside a wallet. Similar Smith & Wesson models can be found for around $650 in the United States, but on Canada’s bustling black market, they could fetch 10 times that figure.
A recent count prepared by the RCMP shows that police forces and other government agencies have lost 813 firearms, including 173 to theft, since 2005.
Another tabulation found that the Mounties had declared 62 firearms lost or stolen between 2010 and 2017.
The figures came in response to an access-to-information request from Dennis Young, a Calgary-based gun researcher who regularly peppers Ottawa with demands for firearms statistics.
Mr. Young said he began asking the Mounties for figures on lost and stolen guns because he felt politicians and the media had been placing inordinate blame on lawful civilian gun-owners as a primary source of firearms ending up in criminal hands.
A Globe and Mail analysis of more than one million entries in Canada’s civilian registry of restricted and prohibited firearms found that nearly 10,000 guns are currently reported as lost or stolen.
Contacted Friday morning, the RCMP did not provide a response to The Globe and Mail’s questions concerning either Wednesday’s theft or the total number of such thefts.
In 2016, one of those stolen RCMP guns was involved in the shooting of a Winnipeg teenager. Calli Vanderaa was sitting in a car outside a convenience store when a bullet pierced her lung, ribs, spleen and colon. Investigators found that the gun had been stolen from an RCMP officer’s van earlier, where it had been improperly stored overnight.
Ms. Vanderaa survived to sue the RCMP and the officer who left the handgun in a truck overnight, contrary to regulations. The parties reached an undisclosed resolution.
On Thursday, Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders announced he was extending a crackdown on gun violence and street gang activity that had been set to expire at the end of October. The plan includes increasing police presence in areas of gang activity, monitoring bail compliance and engaging with community groups.
Chief Saunders said that the city had recorded 237 shootings for 2019 in which someone was killed or injured, more than reported to this point in any other year.
With a report from Tom Cardoso
Patrick White