2 Council Panels Endorse Auto Anti-Theft System

A controversial homing device system that Los Angeles police hope will help curb an ever-growing car theft epidemic was endorsed Tuesday by two important City Council committees.

Backing for the system came over strong objections by several auto alarm dealers that the action would give the manufacturer, LoJack Corp. of Braintree, Mass., a city monopoly based on an ineffective system.

Citing similar concerns last August, LoJack competitors successfully lobbied against state legislation that would have established a pilot program in Los Angeles County for the company’s homing device.

Assurance of No Monopoly

Members of the council’s finance and police committees were assured by the city attorney’s office, however, that LoJack would not have a lock on the auto theft system market. A competitor developing a better system eventually would be able to tie into the LoJack network, the panels were told.

A supporter of the LoJack system, Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, described it as a “James Bond” type of crime-fighting weapon that should be tried in a city where last year 63,000 cars were stolen.

The system uses a small homing device installed in a secret location in a vehicle. A specially coded number for the homing device is fed into a central computer along with a description of the car.

If a car equipped with the device is reported stolen, police can send out a radio signal to activate the transponder in the car. Patrol cars equipped with a tracking device can then zero in on the stolen car and recover it.

Under LoJack’s proposal, which still faces full City Council review, the company would donate $1.5 million worth of tracking devices and other equipment to the LAPD for a three-year pilot program. Trackers would be installed in about 200 LAPD patrol cars and a number of police helicopters, and LoJack would then begin selling the homing devices for about $600 each.

The tracking/homing system has been operating in Massachusetts for more than two years and is now installed in about 17,000 of the state’s 5 million registered cars, said LoJack President C. Michael Daley. Florida has been experimenting with the system in three counties since Dec. 1, he added.

Daley said that 334 of the LoJack-equipped cars had been stolen in Massachusetts since the program began and that 97% of them were recovered as a result of the tracking system. Furthermore, he said, nearly one-fourth of the unsuspecting auto thieves involved were arrested.

But during a three-hour hearing of the two committees, LoJack competitors argued that the Massachusetts company’s product was ineffective because most car thefts are not discovered until hours after they occur. This time lapse gives thieves plenty of time to either strip the car or drive it outside the range of the tracking system.

Other Systems Could Be Used

The competitors also argued that by agreeing to the LoJack pilot program and equipping the LAPD cars with the tracking devices, the city was in effect establishing a special relationship with the company.

Particularly critical of the LoJack proposal was Ze’ev Drori, president of Clifford Electronics in Chatsworth. Drori said that with a special scanning device, an auto thief can determine if police are tracking a stolen car and abandon it before being caught.

Drori added that police already report an 85% recovery rate for stolen cars. The LoJack system, he argued, would not appreciably increase that percentage. LoJack President Daley countered that his company’s system cuts the time between a theft and the recovery of a stolen car to an average of 90 minutes.

Drori’s criticism brought a strong retort from Yaroslavsky, who noted that Drori’s company had been one of the principal foes of recent state legislation to set up a pilot project in Los Angeles County to test the LoJack system. Clifford Electronics and a number of other firms had spent about $30,000 on campaign contributions and a lobbyist in their fight against the bill sponsored by state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia). Davis eventually withdrew the bill after he contended that it had been gutted by the Assembly.