On Jesse Jordan’s front porch in the Beach neighbourhood, at any given time, there are bikes and scooters, a stroller and other personal belongings.
At night, he locks up what he can, and reminds his children to do the same.
At some point in 2017, while his bike was secured, a thief managed to remove the expensive wheels.
It prompted Jordan and his wife to install a surveillance camera.
But, as Jordan told Global News on Thursday, “Never assume that someone is not going to walk on your property and take your stuff because they really don’t care.”
He learned that Tuesday night.
“I saw a guy walking up onto our property and casually looking around, I was shocked at how casual he was and he looked around and he just picked up my wife’s bike and walked away with it,” Jordan said.
Not only is there an obvious surveillance camera mounted on the front porch, there is a motion sensor light.
“He didn’t care about that, in fact, I think it helped him see everything that he needed to see,” Jordan said.
Additionally, the family posted a sign with a smiley face that said, “Smile, you’re on camera.”
That did not deter the thief either.
“He doesn’t care about that, so I don’t know what it is but there’s no fear with these people,” remarked a frustrated Jordan.
And there’s more.
“Ten minutes later, he actually came back, he looked on our porch to see if there was anything else to steal, and again walked away.”
Jordan wasn’t sleeping that night, so he saw the surveillance video and went out searching for his wife’s bike.
Amazingly, he found it at the nearby Danforth Go Train station.
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Jordan said he was relieved, but still felt “violated.”
“We have lot of scooters around that the kids use and they’ve all been stolen from our property,” he said. “We’ve had bikes stolen, we’ve had scooters stolen, our neighbour’s car was stolen last year.”
Const. Jon Morrice, a Toronto Police crime prevention officer in 55 division, said Jordan did everything right.
“That just goes to show, in some cases, how bold some of these criminals are getting.”
Morrice said in many east-end neighbourhoods, people are starting Facebook groups for individual streets or neighbourhoods, to share information about porch theft.
“The police in this division are on those Facebook pages, so we jump in on those social media posts, and give them tips to prevent that sort of specific type of offence so it’s a great way to share information with us but also to get information from the community and we can give back to them as well,” he said.