Tilting Toward Infamy

I visited my old hometown Monday. Nobody stole my car. I’m not altogether thrilled about this. To spend 24 hours in Fresno and not have someone at least try to steal your wheels can be, in an odd way, unnerving. The question arises: What’s wrong with my car, anyway?

Fresno is famous for its prolific raisin harvests. It is infamous, at least in law enforcement circles, for its auto thefts. Year in and year out, the town competes with Newark, N.J., and New York City for the national championship of per-capita auto theft. Last year, 12,418 cars were stolen in Fresno--that’s one in every 30 registered cars, or almost twice the theft rate of Demon Los Angeles.

Cars are stolen every hour, every day, every season. “It slows down for about a day at Christmastime,” said Sgt. Cordell Hemphill, supervisor of the Fresno Police Department vehicle crimes unit. They are stolen from driveways and curbsides, from the poor and the powerful. Twice, the personal vehicles of officers have been stolen from the well-lit Police Department parking lot. Two City Council members have fallen victim, one while he was inside a community affairs meeting--discussing the plague of car thefts.

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Cars are stolen for profit, and also for sport. Since this is Fresno, the most popular model among thieves is a General Motors pickup--the heartbeat of America, and all that. Many snatched vehicles later turn up abandoned, stripped down to the chassis, the parts sold to underground chop shops--or cost-conscious dealerships.

Two-thirds of the thefts are committed by teenagers. They do it because they need party money, or new basketball sneakers. They do it because they are bored, just as a generation earlier, er, certain people I know would sneak out at night and fire up bulldozers for no better reason than to hear them roar. The youngest thief ever caught was 9 years old. “He was a typical 9-year-old,” Hemphill said, “except that he was real good at punching out ignition switches.” Some culprits are so short, and presumably young, that they must use headrests as cushions in order to see over the dashboard.

When new models are introduced, the li’l darlings head to the public library and study repair manuals, searching for a vulnerability. At present the preferred technique is called “tilting.” All it takes is a precise whack on the steering column. In the last decade, this has produced a cottage industry of auto shops that specialize in steering column repairs.

Some thieves employ tow trucks. Hemphill told of a fellow who came out of a movie theater and tried to start up his Chevy Blazer. An awful clanking ensued. “So he got out,” Hemphill went on, “and saw that the drive shaft had been disconnected. He had been about to be towed away, but apparently someone scared the bad guys off. The name of this individual was Ed, Ed Winchester, the chief of police for the city of Fresno.”

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It’s police policy here not to chase stolen cars at high speeds for any distance, and the kids know it. Juvenile Hall is so overcrowded that teenage car thieves caught red-handed frequently are only given tickets. Similarly, adults charged with felony car theft can negotiate misdemeanor convictions. Fresno is the home of Mike Reynolds, who after his daughter was murdered championed the “three strikes” initiative. Some Fresnans suggest the quickest way to end the car theft craze would be to steal Reynolds’ car.

But why Fresno? No one knows for sure. The decade-long surge is blamed on everything from a booming population, to an outnumbered police force, to an influx of Southeast Asian families in which old country parents can’t control hot-to-be-Americanized children. Said Hemphill: “The reason we have done so well, or so poorly, in the vehicle theft category--that is a tough one to nail down.”

His momentary confusion--”so well, or so poorly”--was telling. Fresno, butt of so many bad jokes, remains a town hungry to be noticed, to be “on the map.” Fresnans never met a superlative they didn’t like, good or bad. They thrill to the thought of living in the “nation’s richest” agricultural entity, the nation’s raisin capital, the nation’s arson capital, whatever. Not everyone was displeased a few years back when it finished dead last in a much-publicized survey of “most livable” cities. Better to endure the notoriety of No. 277 than to come in next-to-worst, and altogether anonymous, at No. 276.

Before I left town, I met with my insurance man. He was bubbling. CNN just that morning had broadcast a report on auto thefts. Fresno, he said, had received prominent mention. We both smiled at this, in a way that I suspect only native Fresnans can appreciate.