Police Junkyard Patrol to Look for Stolen Cars

A two-man police “junkyard detail” will begin patrols in the Los Angeles Harbor area Monday, the first day of a six-month pilot program designed to combat the steady increase of car thefts in the region.

A Los Angeles police detective and California Highway Patrol officer will scrutinize many of the area’s 261 salvage yards, wrecking yards and auto dismantlers, said Lt. Mike Markulis of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Harbor Division.

The patrols will be extended beyond six months if the team is successful in catching participants in the harbor’s expanding stolen-car trade.

A total of 1,254 cars were stolen in Wilmington, San Pedro, Harbor City and the Harbor Gateway during the first seven months of this year, compared to 1,056 during he same period in 1987, a 19% increase. And car thefts had already increased 15.5% in the harbor area from 1986 to 1987, according to Los Angeles police.

“We tried to go over to inspect the junkyards and keep them honest,” Markulis said. “We’ve gone in there periodically, but you need something more consistent.”

Junkyard patrols have previously succeeded in weeding out unethical business people, police said. During an 18-month period in 1984 and 1985, a two-man team made 260 arrests for crimes ranging from auto theft and receiving stolen property to misdemeanor business code violations.

Police officials said they did not have figures on how many of those arrested were convicted.

But the previous junkyard detail was disbanded when other crimes, particularly drug sales, began to soar.

Markulis said the new detail marks the first time that a highway patrol officer will work directly with Los Angeles police in investigating the salvage businesses.

The state Vehicle Code gives police the authority to inspect without search warrants salvage yards, car repair shops and similar businesses.

The two detectives will look for late-model cars that have been stripped and other evidence of auto thefts, said Mike Reeve, the Harbor Division’s auto-theft coordinator.

Police said unscrupulous auto salvage firms typically commit three types of crimes: buying stolen car parts, stripping stolen cars themselves for parts and producing cars for resale by combining parts from stolen cars with parts from cars that have been legitimately dismantled.

It takes experts only a few hours to tear apart a stolen car and to dispose of the shell, often on the streets of east Wilmington, Reeve said. Police said they hope to close in on the “chop shops” while they still have stolen cars on their property. It is more difficult to prove a crime, they said, once the stripped cars have been dumped on the street.

In the past, most mainstream salvage yards have supported the special police inspections.

Joe Zacher Jr. of Zacher Automotive Recyclers in Harbor City said the junkyard detail should concentrate its efforts on unlicensed auto repair shops and salvage yards that he said have been responsible for most of the stolen car trade. Most licensed businesses comply with the law, he said.

“The good guys who are licensed and doing business legally would not really object to this detail,” Zacher said.