Posted on Thu, May. 01, 2008
Protect your junk
If your old car is a piece of junk you wish someone would steal, now's the time to leave it parked in the dark, unlocked, with the keys in it.
The price of junk has gone up, so it's worth stealing.
It's worth its weight in scrap, about $150 a ton, said Sgt. Ken Hudson of the Columbus police motor vehicle theft unit. That's a few hundred bucks for a heavy car.
Besides fast financial gain, swiping a car's fun for fast and furious joy rides, and often an old car's easier to filch than a new one, because it doesn't have all that fancy anti-theft OnStar stuff in it.
Police Lt. Gil Slouchick tells of a 1991 Oldsmobile 98 that belonged to his mother. She was 72, and never drove it -- her doctor didn't want her to -- but still felt she needed a car.
About two years ago, it was stolen. Thieves broke a window and hot-wired it. Later it was found abandoned and trashed up. Repairs cost $450.
Parking it back at his mother's place, Slouchick tried an extra security measure: He disconnected the battery cable.
Two weeks later, thieves busted out a back window, climbed in and tried to hot-wire it again. When it didn't crank, they gave up.
Yank the crank
Reporting last week that the Columbus area in 2007 led Georgia and Alabama in the rate of vehicle thefts per capita (628 per 100,000 residents), the National Insurance Crime Bureau offered tips to protect your car. Some cost more than you'd invest in a rambling wreck, like installing alarm systems, vehicle locators or other high-tech devices.
What else can you do to keep thieves from cashing in a clunker for scrap?
Install a kill switch, Hudson said -- a hidden toggle that must be thrown before the car will crank. Or remove the coil wire or, like Slouchick, disconnect a battery cable. Or buy a "Club" that locks the steering wheel, the sight of which may deter thieves before they break a window.
Other suggestions are just common sense: close the windows, lock the car, park it under a light. "And don't keep a spare set of keys in the car, in the glove box or the console," Hudson said.
Numbers game
Though Columbus still leads the NICB theft rankings in two states, the number of thefts is falling, Hudson said: "My numbers are down. Even the first quarter for 2008 is less than the first quarter in 2007, so they're dropping."
Online at www.nicb.org, the NICB last week reported that in 2007, the four-county Columbus metro area had 1,757 vehicle thefts. Yet Columbus reported 1,791, and Phenix City had 212 -- a total of 2,003 from just two agencies. Hudson said the NICB won't count thefts in which the victim provided no vehicle identification or tag number, but police will.
In 2006, Columbus had 1,856 vehicle thefts, and Phenix City had 266.
Hudson said he once saw a trend in thefts of older model General Motors vehicles, but that eased up after police busted a ring of car thieves.
"I'm not getting any real patterns right now," he said. "It is truly becoming a crime of opportunity. If the opportunity presents itself, they'll steal it."
Ensuring an engine won't crank may deny thieves that opportunity, but even cars so junked they don't roll are worth stealing now, and need to be kept behind a locked fence, Hudson said.
"That old car that is sitting up underneath a tree and has been there for a year because it was your daddy's car and he left it to you in his will, these junk dealers -- we don't know who they are yet -- have been known to come by and just snatch it up," Hudson said.
So don't leave that where thieves can haul it off -- unless you want them to.
If you do, then put that chunk of junk out front, with a "Free Scrap" sign on the trunk.
Contact Tim Chitwood at 706-571-8508 or tchitwood@ledger-enquirer.com
