Stolen Car Tracking System Gets Wide Police Tryout

Every Los Angeles County law enforcement agency but one has signed on to a private company’s high-tech system for tracing stolen cars, and officials of the Massachusetts-based LoJack Corp. say the technology will be available to consumers in June.

After an aggressive yearlong marketing effort by LoJack, 48 of 49 local police agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the California Highway Patrol, have agreed to participate in the system.

Under the technology, police use computers to track stolen cars that have been equipped with homing devices.

Only the Culver City Police Department has declined to take part in LoJack’s project. Officers there say they are not convinced that homing devices and tracking systems will be effective in sprawling, hilly Los Angeles County.

Many law enforcement officials say they believe the new technology will not only help recover stolen cars but also deter thieves once enough consumers buy signal units.

“We think this will be a great step forward. It is a system with a proven track record,” said Lt. Frederick D. Price of the Sheriff’s Department.

However, what remains to be seen is whether consumers will be willing to spend the estimated $595 that LoJack charges for the homing devices. The units will be sold through used and new car dealers, but must be installed by LoJack technicians.

By successfully wooing police departments, the company has virtually cornered the market on sales because cruisers will be outfitted with mobile computers that track only LoJack units.

LoJack representatives and police in Massachusetts, where the system has operated since 1986, say the technology has allowed them to recover about 96% of stolen vehicles within 24 hours after thefts are reported. That compares to about a 40% recovery rate in Los Angeles.

In Massachusetts, LoJack has sold more than 35,000 signal units and police have found more than 900 stolen vehicles by tracking the homing devices, company officials said. Terry Soley, general manager of LoJack’s California operations, said the company hopes to sell about 20,000 of the devices in the first year of the Los Angeles County program.

The system also is operating in two south Florida counties and is to be launched in the next few months in New Jersey, Michigan and Illinois, Soley said. In California, LoJack wants to expand into San Francisco, Alameda, Sacramento and San Diego counties.

But Culver City police say they will hold out in Los Angeles County because they remain unconvinced that the cost of equipping cruisers with mobile tracking computers is worth the investment at $1,750 apiece.

“We are not at all convinced that these things are tamper-proof. I think we all know that a seasoned car thief is quickly going to be able to find these things, and tear them out. Then the thing will beep away and we will be looking in trash barrels,” said Capt. Lars Seterling of the Culver City Police Department.

Seterling said Culver City officers also were concerned that many car owners wouldn’t discover thefts for hours, during which time thieves might have left the 5- to 20-mile radius tracking area.

Soley said the system has proven effective elsewhere, and thieves likely will not find the 7-inch-long transmitters in one of 30 hidden locations where they will be installed in cars.

Other police admit they are not sure whether the technology will hold up over time, but say the cost of buying mobile tracking computers is not high enough to deter them from trying it out.

“We are a little concerned because I understand there are other systems out there. We don’t want to get our cars loaded down if something better comes along,” said Lloyd Wood, Azusa chief of police and president of the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Assn. “But LoJack was the first one to come to us.”

One competitor, Clifford Electronics Inc. of Chatsworth, filed an antitrust claim in Los Angeles Federal Court in April, 1989, contending that LoJack unfairly eliminated competition by relentlessly recruiting police departments. In January, a judge in Los Angeles dismissed the lawsuit, saying LoJack was not engaged in a monopoly because other companies were still free to pursue the manufacture and sales of the technology.

An attorney for Clifford said the company intends to pursue legal action further.

“Now the only source for those transponders (homing devices) is LoJack, which sells them for $595,” said Maxwell Blecher. “My people (at Clifford) said they could come into the market for $395 and make a very respectable profit. What (LoJack) is going to do is rape people on the cost.”

Competitors like Clifford Electronics tried early on to join LoJack in the Los Angeles market.

In 1988, Clifford lobbied heavily against state legislation that would have established a $1-million LoJack pilot program in Los Angeles. At that time, Clifford persuaded Assemblyman Jim Costa (D-Fresno) to add amendments to encourage other companies to bid for a contract to implement a similar stolen car recovery system. The bill failed when LoJack stopped pushing for passage, and the company agreed to provide start-up costs for the system in Los Angeles.

In the end, LoJack promised to give the LAPD $1.7 million worth of stationary computers, transmitters and mobile tracking computers. To win the Sheriff’s Department’s support, LoJack donated 150 mobile tracking computers. The CHP got a donation of 90 of the computers from the company.

In the past year, LoJack officials have methodically lobbied smaller police forces to join up, arguing that the system would work only if the entire county is blanketed by coverage.

To each of the smaller departments, LoJack donated one tracking computer apiece. Most then agreed to buy additional computers. In Torrance, for example, police plan to purchase nine more tracking computers, and in Santa Monica the department plans to buy three.

Signing up police departments before selling the system to consumers is a marketing strategy that LoJack officials hope will work to their advantage. They argue that LoJack, which researched the technology for 10 years, is at the forefront of its development.

“In Los Angeles, we recognized it’s true that people love their cars and they want to protect them. From a business perspective, it is a wonderful opportunity for us,” Soley said. “If somebody does not like the system, they don’t have to buy it.”

BACKGROUND

Cars outfitted with a $595 homing device--hidden somewhere in the auto’s interior--send out coded signals detected by police with mobile tracking computers in their cruisers. When a vehicle is stolen and the owner reports it to police, the LoJack Corp. that manufactures the system activates the homing device. Any police officer with a mobile tracking computer within a 5- to 20-mile radius will be able to pick up the signal. The system will not work if the stolen car is taken beyond that radius.