Auto Thefts Skyrocket Throughout Region : Grand Theft: Growth and a lucrative auto parts market contribute to more cars being pilfered from Pomona to Pasadena.
Warren K. Funk sometimes jokes about arming his car with a double-barreled shotgun that could be rigged so it would fire on would-be thieves.
Probably not a prudent idea, concedes Funk, the support services manager for the city of Monterey Park. But this is what goes through the head of a man who has had three cars stolen in just 2 1/2 years.
One of them, a racy blue Toyota Celica, was even snatched from his reserved parking space right across from City Hall. The next morning, police found its hollowed chassis on a nearby street, stripped to bare metal, minus seats, doors, dashboard, sunroof and steering wheel.
“Going three for three is not a distinction I would particularly like to be known for,” said Funk, a retired Air Force major who moved from Northern California to the San Gabriel Valley in 1987. “But I must admit the rapidity with which my cars have been latched onto is certainly something to make you shake your head at.”
Funk is not the only one shaking his head. Over the last five years, 15 San Gabriel Valley cities have experienced increases of more than 100% in their rates of auto theft--making it the fastest growing crime in the region.
Virtually no city has been spared, from tiny Walnut, where the number of stolen cars has nearly quadrupled since 1984, to West Covina, whose 1,558 pilfered vehicles was tops in the San Gabriel Valley last year.
Other cities where grand theft auto has more than doubled in the last five years include Azusa, Baldwin Park, Covina, Claremont, Duarte, El Monte, Glendora, La Puente, La Verne, Monterey Park, Rosemead, San Dimas and San Gabriel.
“Basically, if you’re leaving your car on the street overnight, you’re taking your chances,” said Monterey Park Police Detective Walt Osman. “It’s fair game.”
Auto theft in the San Gabriel Valley as a whole has jumped 96% since 1984, from 6,084 thefts to 11,896 in 1988--probably the most dramatic rate of increase in any region of Los Angeles County, according to FBI crime statistics.
The city of Los Angeles, still the stolen car capital of the state with 62,709 vehicles snatched last year, registered a modest 28% increase in that period.
Authorities have no ready answers to explain why the crime has soared so rapidly in the San Gabriel Valley, except to say that the jump has merely brought the area up to parity with the rest of Southern California.
Growth and rapid immigration, the development of large shopping mall parking lots, and the increasingly lucrative used auto parts market all help to make the problem worse, police said.
Perhaps most of all, they added, the courts have been reluctant to throw juvenile auto thieves in jail when detention facilities are already full with hardened gang members, drive-by shooters and crack dealers.
“It’s become a low-risk, high-profit crime,” said Lt. Chuck Shipley, who heads the vehicle theft unit for the southern division of the California Highway Patrol. “You can go out and steal a $10,000 car . . . and there’s a chance you might not even serve time.”
Take the nine Vietnamese teen-agers arrested by Monterey Park police last February after detectives observed them, clad in surgical gloves and wielding power tools, stripping two Toyota Celicas in the carport of an apartment complex.
Police alleged that the youths were responsible for stealing at least 25 cars in the previous month, stripping them in their makeshift “chop shop” and dumping the empty hulls on neighborhood streets.
But when Detective Wes Clair tried to get prosecutors to file charges against the nine, he said he was instructed to simply release the youths to the custody of their parents.
Three days later, all of them were arrested again in Santa Ana for allegedly stealing four cars in one continuous spree. They each served about three months in juvenile detention facilities for the offenses, said Clair.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “There’s one 15-year-old kid who I’ve arrested seven times.”
A special directive issued by Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner last June urged his staff to seek maximum penalties in all auto theft cases, but prosecutors say the mostly juvenile offenders still frequently get off without doing time.
“Everybody’s overburdened,” said Fred Kubik, head of the juvenile division in the Pasadena branch of the district attorney’s office. “We view it as a serious crime, but, yes, they do get off too easily.”
Of course, police say, it would help if people would lock their cars. One of every five vehicles stolen has either a door unlocked or the keys left in the ignition, the CHP says.
Anti-theft devices, such as alarms or locking bars that hook to the steering wheel, also serve as deterrents, officers say. But many motorists don’t think of that until they’ve already been victimized.
“People just figure it could never happen to them,” said Don Schulz, assistant manager in Pasadena of Al and Ed’s Autosound, which installs 20 to 25 alarm systems a week. “Very rarely will anyone come here unless they’ve already been ripped off or a friend has.”
If a thief wants your car, however, there’s very little that will keep it from happening.
An experienced practitioner can pop a lock with a screwdriver, yank out the ignition with a $1.59 slide hammer and have the car running within about 30 seconds. Some detectives on surveillance jobs have timed the procedure at a smooth eight seconds flat.
The favorite targets are Toyotas, police say, although Hondas, Mazdas, Nissans and Hyundais are snatched up at a fairly quick pace as well. In most cases, the thief is less interested in the vehicle than in the parts, which can often fetch as much as five times the value of the car itself, authorities say.
“There’s a tremendous market for stolen parts,” said Monrovia Police Chief Joseph Santoro. “And that market perpetuates itself.”
Sometimes, the cars are stripped of only obvious items, such as stereos, speakers and other luxury accessories. But more sophisticated thieves have another trick, police say.
They go to auctions where insurance companies sell the stripped chassis of stolen cars they have recovered. The thieves buy the chassis and outfit them with parts from other stolen cars of the same make, either to sell at a high profit or keep for themselves. The chassis, with its identification number, is thus purchased legitimately. The parts usually cannot be traced.
“I found a Toyota Celica that was in brand new condition, like it was off the showroom floor,” Clair said. “I ran the license number through the computer and it came back as a junk. For $2,000, they had a $20,000 car, and the car was legitimate.”
Mike Michels, a spokesman for Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., said Toyotas come equipped with “real neat little goodies,” such as high quality stereos and comfortable seats, which make them popular targets for theft.
But, Michels added, the company has begun taking measures to make the cars more theft resistant, such as designing new door locks and installing shrouds around the door frames that thwart thin metal lock-popping tools known as “slim jims.”
“This is a subject that really bothers us,” said Michels, adding that there are more than 1 million Toyotas on the road in the Los Angeles area. “The only thing I can figure is that Toyota is a real well-known car . . . and there’s a lot of them out there to steal.”
About two years ago, West Covina Detective Gary Christensen helped form the San Gabriel Valley Auto Theft Investigators Assn., a group of local police officers who meet four times a year to share information about suspects and strategies.
In addition, many area police departments in recent years have created the position of a full-time auto theft investigator, a task that previously was shared by detectives who also had to handle forged checks and other fraud cases.
But none of that is enough, officers say, if a youth can steal a car worth a year’s wages and walk away with only his wrists slapped.
“Nowadays, transportation is your livelihood,” Christensen said. “Yet nothing happens to these kids. They’re back on the streets before we’ve even written the reports.”
CAR THEFTS IN SAN GABRIEL VALLEY Over the last five years, 15 San Gabriel Valley cities have experienced more than 100% increases in their rates of auto theft, probably the sharpest jump of any region in Los Angeles County, according to FBI crime statistics. Although the raw numbers are still relatively low--the 62,709 cars stolen in Los Angeles last year dwarf the 11,896 stolen in the entire San Gabriel Valley--the impacts on individual communities have been dramatic.
CITY 1984 1988 % CHANGE Alhambra 433 725 +67 Arcadia 247 351 +42 Azusa 164 333 +103 Baldwin Park 289 654 +126 Covina 170 447 +163 Claremont 60 191 +218 Duarte 68 153 +125 El Monte 589 1,508 +156 Glendora 78 164 +110 La Puente 182 395 +117 La Verne 46 96 +109 Monrovia 168 255 +52 Monterey Park 349 768 +120 Pasadena 990 1,313 +33 Pomona 711 1,379 +94 Rosemead 209 484 +132 San Dimas 71 148 +108 San Gabriel 121 256 +112 San Marino 14 14 0 Sierra Madre 17 19 +1 S. El Monte 175 296 +69 S. Pasadena 134 152 +13 Temple City 91 115 +26 Walnut 32 122 +281 W. Covina 676 1,558 +131
