San Diego Car Thefts Race Along at 3 an Hour

In spring last year, the jacaranda trees were blooming a soft violet, and Ned Lemke had the unsettling experience of seeing a car-- his car, unmistakably his silver-colored 1977 Datsun 280Z, the same one that had been ripped off in front of his house two weeks earlier--parked on 2nd Avenue near downtown San Diego. The vehicle looked all right, if somewhat worn, but there was one very telling difference: It carried powder-blue Baja California license plates.

“I knew it was my car right away,” Lemke said, recalling how he spotted a familiar nick on the side-view mirror, the product of a falling ski. “I thought maybe I’d just take my keys out of my pocket and drive off.”

Discretion triumphed, however, and Lemke telephoned police, who soon recovered his car the old-fashioned way: setting up a stakeout. When a driver entered the stolen vehicle and tried to drive off, officers converged in five unmarked cars, brakes screeching, tires smoking and guns drawn.

“Like something out of ‘Starsky and Hutch,’ ” recalled Lemke, who watched the action.

In two weeks as “hot” property, his Datsun had aged--3,000 miles’ worth. Police told Lemke it had probably been used to ferry undocumented immigrants and drugs across the U.S.-Mexican border.

More Than 3 an Hour

Lemke’s car was one of 31,306 vehicles stolen in San Diego County last year, almost 60% of them purloined within the city of San Diego. That’s an average of more than three an hour, 24 hours a day countywide.

Overall, car thefts in the county surged a staggering 35% last year from 1986, the largest such rise among major counties in California, the California Highway Patrol said. The increase was more than three times the 11% jump registered statewide and seven times the national increase, which was 5%.

By contrast, vehicle thefts in Los Angeles County, which account for almost half of those statewide, rose less than 4% last year. In Orange County, the increase was about 6%.

In fact, the increase here was one of the steepest in the nation. Among large cities, only Seattle (a 61% increase) and Jacksonville, Fla. (57%), experienced more dramatic upswings, according to the National Automobile Theft Bureau, an Illinois-based insurance industry group that closely monitors the issue.

And the problem, which law enforcement officials here find increasingly puzzling and vexing, shows no signs of abating. Solidifying its position as the city’s fastest-growing crime, vehicle theft shot up 39% in the first three months of 1988 contrasted with the same period last year. Overall, major crimes increased 15%. Last month, San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender said the thefts are “driving us nuts.”

Anecdotal evidence of the problem abounds. Everyone, it seems, knows someone who has had a car or truck stolen recently, from curbs, driveways, garages or parking lots. Chastened by the tales of woe, some people are taking more precautions.

“We’re getting a lot more inquiries about these steering wheel locks in the past couple of months,” said a salesman at an auto-goods store in San Diego.

Apart from the loss of property involved, the thefts result in higher insurance premiums. Industry experts put the annual cost of vehicle theft nationwide at $6 billion, including $1 billion for law enforcement.

The good news is that, statewide, almost 90% of all stolen vehicles are recovered. Unfortunately, recovered , in police lingo, can mean that the vehicles are without engines or transmissions, or have been reduced to heaps of rubble--identifiable, but rubble. Only 62% of stolen vehicles statewide are recovered in drivable condition, the CHP said.

Statewide, officials say Toyota Celicas and Corollas are among the favored targets of car thieves, along with the ever-reliable Volkswagen Bugs. Toyota, Ford and Nissan pickups are also favorites. These vehicles are preferred because of their popularity and comparatively high resale value, officials say, along with the ease of penetrating their lock systems.

Why is San Diego experiencing proportionally greater increases in vehicle thefts than other areas? That question remains largely unanswered.

No Easy Explanation

“I can’t pin it down,” said Lt. Charles Grimm, who heads the auto-theft detail for the San Diego Police Department.

“There really isn’t an easy answer,” said Sgt. Benny Price, who supervises vehicle-theft cases for the CHP in San Diego.

Instead, officials supply a variety of reasons--a surge in drug-related vehicle pirating; an increase in joy riding; and professional thievery, often by well-organized and ever-more-sophisticated rings lured by growing profits.

But those reasons, although undoubtedly valid, would appear to apply as equally elsewhere as here. Another oft-mentioned factor, also not limited to San Diego, involves the relatively slim odds that the thieves will ever be caught, much less end up in jail, given the prevalent police and judicial emphasis on violent crime and drugs. (Arrests are made in only 15% of vehicle thefts nationwide, according to industry estimates.)

One factor specific to San Diego, however, is the proximity of the U.S.-Mexican border, which has long been a haven for vehicle thieves, some of whom transport their booty into the Mexican interior, and even Central and South America, purportedly with the frequent help of Mexican police officials.

Each year, industry officials say, up to 20,000 stolen vehicles are funneled into Mexico across the border. The police chief in Brownsville, Tex., on the border along the Gulf of Mexico, recently estimated that nine out of 10 cars stolen there wind up in Mexico. Four-wheel-drive vehicles and pickup trucks are particularly inviting targets along the border, an understandable preference in view of their rough-terrain performance.

Southward Flow Not Growing

So widespread is the image of stolen vehicles rolling south that victims in San Diego and other border communities routinely assume that their property has ended up in Mexico, never to be seen again. In some cases they are right. But not always.

U.S. authorities and industry officials say it is unlikely that the flow south is growing. Investigators point proudly to recent collaborative efforts by police on both sides of the border, efforts that have led to the return of almost 3,000 stolen vehicles to California in the last two years, the CHP says.

“I don’t see any increase going south,” said CHP Sgt. Vicente Calderon, who heads a five-member unit that checks for stolen cars in Mexico, working with Mexican police officials and checking impound lots and other sites from Tijuana to Mexicali. The squad operates under the terms of a 1983 convention between the United States and Mexico, an agreement that has proved workable if somewhat cumbersome.

However, authorities say there is evidence that the border may figure somewhat, albeit probably not decisively, in the upswing of stolen vehicles in San Diego. With ever-greater frequency, officials say, smugglers are using “hot” cars and trucks to transport undocumented immigrants, drugs and other contraband from Mexico into the United States.

The U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego reported a 38% increase last year in the number of stolen vehicles--from small cars to 18-wheeler tractor-trailer rigs--its agents seized while breaking up smuggling operations. Last January, agents took possession of a record 156 stolen vehicles--a single-month record--being used to ply illicit border trade.

“Smuggling is an organized criminal activity,” said Michael Nicley, a Border Patrol spokesman, “and one of the things that smugglers use is stolen conveyances.”

Lightning Strikes Twice

Ned Lemke’s Datsun 280Z was apparently one of those conveyances put to use along the border. But Lemke was lucky: He did get the car back, somewhat the worse for wear, but repairable.

About a year after his car was stolen, lightning struck again: Someone stole his younger brother Craig’s 1983 Volkswagen on the same street where Ned’s car had been taken. Eventually, Craig Lemke’s car was also found--minus a stereo, but with everything else intact. It turned up in Mexico.

“I guess we’re classic victims,” said Ned Lemke, a 27-year-old computer monitor who lives in Mission Hills. “I recall this movie I once saw, ‘Gone in 60 Seconds.’ It’s just so easy to steal a car.”

Not next time, he hopes. Lemke recently invested $15 in a brake-to-steering wheel lock.