Breaking Perth News
Dozens of Cars stolen from Perth properties
DOZENS of potentially deadly weapons are now in the wrong hands after a spate of car thefts across Perth in recent months.
In the space of just 48 hours, 17 cars were stolen in separate burglaries in Bedfordale and Port Kennedy – with five Festivas already recovered.
Thieves smashed their way into the Bedfordale home early Wednesday morning, taking five Hyundai Excels, seven Commodores and some petrol from the garage.
The owner told Seven News his car was supposed to be “unstealable” when he bought it, but the thieves managed to bust it open using equipment nearby.
Detectives recovered the man’s stolen Hyundais after a police chase in Osborne Park on Thursday, but the Commodores, including a limited edition Brock VK, remain missing.
In recent months, five licenced cars were stolen in Port Kennedy, 13 Land Cruisers were stolen during a burglary at a licenced SUV dealer in Rockingham, a high powered Mitsubishi Evo was taken from Ellenbrook and six more utes were stolen in Canning Vale.
Detectives are now working to recover the remaining vehicles.
Local car dealer Hugh Johns from John’s Mitsubishi was asked whether immobilisers were good enough to prevent the theft of cars.
“Door locks and immobilisers and ample for deterring the theft of cars, but no car is impenetrable.”
However, Mr Johns did admit that he had no idea how many unlicensed cars were in the community.
Last year more than 1200 people died in motor vehicle crashes. Car Control Australia (CCA) have called for tougher restrictions on the storage of cars, especially “high powered” vehicles.
“Vehicle theft is a product of inadequate storage requirements. Poor storage will not only see an increase in car theft, but could potentially mean an increase in accidentaly (sic) injury or death and cars being used more widely in suicides. It’s time for a wholesale tightening of regulations. Electronic monitoring is best practice and we must introduce this for all cars.” said Lee Sam, Chair of the CCA said today. “If they didn’t have access to vehicles, criminals wouldn’t be able to deal drugs, use standover tactics with local businesses or carry out other unlawful activity. How would a terrorist transport a bomb without a vehicle? Case closed”
In addition to electronic monitoring, CCA is proposing the introduction of penalties for anyone who has their car stolen, as clearly they didn’t lock their car correctly and are therefore culpable. Restrictions on high powered cars are also being proposed.
“The V8 Commodores that were at Bathurst are capable of travelling 400 meters in 10 seconds – why would any member of the public need to do that? All V8 vehicles should be prohibited”
Investigations into the stolen cars is continuing, but with cars now causing more than 5 times the number of deaths per year than firearms, every Australian should be immensely worried.
*
— This is satire, but the message it conveys isn’t —
*
This is a news article written about guns, where I changed all references from guns to cars (plus a bit of extra flair added). The only thing I didn’t swap was the statistic on fatalities – in Australia 5 times the number of people die in a motor vehicle than with a firearm. My previous blog has more information on this.
For those people who aren’t familiar with gun laws, changing the language in this way demonstrates just how harshly firearm owners are treated compared to other sections of society.
This was posted to Facebook. Comments such as “why are car owners being targeted, why don’t the Police target criminals?” and other logical approaches to this issue were made. I couldn’t agree with them more.
Zaine Beaton