Auto thefts reduces significantly, locally and nationally
In the middle of the night, the phone rang.
The caller asked the woman whether she knew police had her car pulled over on Smith Street on the city’s southeast side. She did not. And when she peered out her window, sure enough, her tan Buick that had been parked in the driveway outside was gone.
When the woman raced to the scene on Smith Street, police officers, who had chased down her car after the driver failed to pull over for a traffic stop, showed her a picture of a man she did not know and had never seen, according to an Allen Superior Court document.
It was the man who allegedly stole her car.
That scene played out Thursday, but reports of vehicle thefts have dramatically decreased throughout the nation in recent years as well as within Fort Wayne, which saw a decrease of more than 153 stolen vehicle cases from 2009 to 2010.
Officials and experts can only speculate at reasons for the recent decline: part of it might be new technology that keeps vehicles more secure coupled with more modern technology police have at their disposal in fighting crime.
In Fort Wayne, part of it might also be that people responsible for many car thefts have been put in prison in recent years.
“Locally, some of the people known for stealing vehicles for ages have been put away or have outgrown that area of crime,” said Detective Joseph Hollinger of the Fort Wayne police department said. “People have not taken their place at this point and time, to a huge degree.”
‘Whole lot of effort’
In 2010, the Fort Wayne metropolitan statistical area ranked as the 257th most likely place in the country where your vehicle would be stolen, according to new data released by the National Insurance Crime Bureau.
The California metropolitan areas Fresno, Modesto and Bakersfield-Delano were ranked Nos. 1, 2 and 3, respectively.
The Illinois non-profit organization receives support from property and casualty insurance companies and releases similar statistics, based on preliminary FBI numbers, every year.
Nationwide, the number of stolen vehicles has decreased seven straight years. The 2010 total is expected to be a 7.2 percent drop from the 794,616 vehicles stolen in 2009, according to the organization’s report.
“I think it’s a combination amongst a lot of elements,” said Frank Scafidi, the director of public affairs for the National Insurance Crime Bureau. “Technology, both on the enforcement end and the prevention end, play a part. Cars are coming off the assembly line much more secure than 5 or 10 years ago.”
Scafidi said police departments across the nation have tools such as license plate scanners that can catch stolen cars quickly. New vehicles are also sometimes equipped with recovery systems like LoJack or OnStar, which can help secure or track a car.
Police departments also use bait cars, at times, Scafidi said.
These vehicles, usually nicer ones, are equipped with a global positioning system, video and audio and parked in an area of town where it would likely be stolen, Scafidi said. If someone tries to steal the vehicle, police have the entire crime on camera.
“You basically go fishing,” Scafidi said.
But like Hollinger, Scafidi said the decline could also be that more and more people who used to commit vehicle thefts are moving into other crimes, that the racket may not always provide the profit it once did.
“Maybe one factor is that these thieves are thinking stealing a car is a whole lot of effort and they’re moving into another type of insurance fraud,” Scafidi said.
Spare parts
As the Fort Wayne woman who had her tan Buick stolen Thursday found out, though, vehicle theft hasn’t been eliminated.
In 2009, Fort Wayne had 558 confirmed vehicle thefts. In 2010, that number fell to 405, which was more than the national trend that year, according to Hollinger. So far this year, numbers appear to be at about the 2010 level, he said.
“What I’m seeing so far is that we’re going to level off,” Hollinger said. “The numbers will be pretty close to the same as last year.”
So far this year, from Jan. 1 to July 13, there have been 351 reports of vehicle theft called into Fort Wayne police, though it’s unclear in how many of those instances a car was actually stolen.
Hollinger said instead of vehicles like cars or trucks, thieves are heavily targeting certain types of motorcycles, mopeds and the catalytic converters, which are devices that reduce the toxicity of emissions in vehicles.
When vehicles do get stolen, though, the types can range the gamut.
Older cars can provide spare parts that are sometimes worth more than the entire car, Scafidi said. According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, the most common vehicles stolen in Indiana during 2009 were the 1990 Chevrolet pickup, the 2000 Ford Taurus and the 1994 Olds Cutlass Supreme.
“People will take older cars and try to scrap them out since the value of scrap metal is high,” Hollinger said.
Still, some thieves will target the more expensive models. In January, five high-end cars – four Audis and a Mercedes – were taken from the O’Daniel Porsche-Audi dealership at 5611 Illinois Road. At the time, police told a manager at the dealership that it might’ve been the biggest auto heist ever in the region.
The cars, valued at more than $175,000, were eventually found in some woods in Kosciusko County – in the same condition as when they were stolen. The cars were apparently being prepared to be shipped overseas, where they could have fetched double their U.S. worth.
No arrests have been made in that case, which had all the markings of a professional job – no forced entry into the dealership, no broken glass, no one captured on surveillance cameras.
“It goes in cycles,” Hollinger said. “Usually there will be several different groups doing them, and its hard to pin anyone down.”
