GTA a hot-spot for gas-and-dash crimes: Report

TORONTO, Ont. – Liberal MPP Mike Colle (Eglinton-Lawrence) says being a gas station attendant in Ontario should not have to be one of the most dangerous jobs in the province.

Already trying to get legislation passed at Queen’s Park to make it safer for attendants, Colle said there are small changes which could be made right away, while waiting for the legislature to resume sitting.

“Every day, the small independent gas station owner is going to work risking their life. This is crazy,” he said, Friday.

He has put together a map which shows the number of cases and the areas in which they took place, and it shows that the GTA is a hot spot for gas-and-dash crimes.

About 10,000 of these crimes took place in the past year, in total, with approximately 3,000 of those in Peel, York, Durham and Toronto.  

Colle first took up a campaign called “Jayesh’s Law” involving pre-payment cards shortly after 44-year-old gas station attendant Jayesh Prajapati was killed in September, after being run down by the driver of a car who had just stolen gas.

“We don’t need a government law to bring in pump cards. The courts could be tougher on these criminals, and for the public in general to treat this as a serious crime,” he said. “This crime is for some reason, being tolerated as a normal occurence.”

Colle also suggests better video surveillance, more lighting and a general better awareness by the public of what gas station workers have to deal with, while calling on the oil companies to help defray any costs of modernizing the pumps at independent stations.

He said gas theft numbers have dropped significantly in B.C., ever since officials switched to a province-wide pre-payment system. The pre-payment cards are used by people who don’t wish to use their debit or credit cards. 

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