With one vehicle stolen every 26 seconds across the country, car thieves in the US seem to have an easy time of it.
But in some cities, police have turned the thieves’ greed and nifty new technology around on them, letting the car catch the crook.
Using decoys to nab the bad guys is nothing new in police work, but in Arlington County just outside of Washington, the police don’t have to wait by the bait to nail their target.
When the unsuspecting thief forces open the door of an attractive car left in place by law enforcement, a hidden camera begins to film him. At the same time an alarm goes off in the police headquarters, and a GPS device automatically begins tracking him in the car.
Once a police team is in pace to make the arrest, they simply send an electronic command to the car to stop, locking its doors at the same time so the thief can’t get out. He can’t do anything but wait inside for the arrival of the police.
The system has been remarkably successful. Since 2002, when Arlington police began setting out decoy cars in areas known for car theft or other crime, the number of cars stolen each year has been cut by more than half, from 676 to just 302 last year.
The Arlington police have brought in 92 crooks, out of 94 attempted thefts of decoy vehicles, said John Lisle, spokesman for the county police — and they have a 100 percent conviction rate.
With the video of the theft as evidence against them, the thieves have little to defend themselves with in court.
“We use vehicles that are probably attractive to car thieves,” Lisle said. “We put the vehicles in locations where there is a higher probability of them being taken, a neighborhood where there have been issues with car thefts.”
The decoy program clearly works: The 302 cars stolen county-wide last year was the fewest since 1961.
The police mostly use Honda Civics and Accords and the Toyota Camry as bait. The three models are the most popular with car thieves in the country, the National Insurance Crime Bureau says.
To help out, the Nationwide insurance company donates the decoy cars equipped with the electronic gear for catching the thieves to police stations in high-theft areas like Dallas and Houston, in Texas; Detroit, Michigan and Miami, Florida.
“We’ve donated 29 vehicles. And we have 23-plus additional requests, we have a waiting list,” said Lee Herman, vice-president in charge of the investigation unit with Nationwide.
“They are fitted with cameras, outfitted with kill switches, door locks, motion sensors, GPS to track the vehicle,” he said.
It is a safer way of nabbing the crook, too.
“All the thief can do is sit in the car and wait to be arrested, instead of engaging in a high-speed chase,” he said.
Dallas stopped its program for a month recently after a thief driving a decoy car whose engine would not cut off crashed into an 83 year old driver, killing her.
But last week they restarted the program, which has trapped 245 thieves since 2004.
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