Car thefts on O'ahu down slightly in 2003
By Peter Boylan
Advertiser Staff Writer
Catherine Sustana went running one morning last December and returned to an empty carport.
Honolulu police cleared less cases, however — 408 in 2003 compared with 464 in 2002. Source: Honolulu Police Department
When she called police to report her car stolen, she learned that her Honda Accord had been found — abandoned, ticketed, stripped and towed — before she knew it was gone.
O'ahu car thefts
"Once I pieced it all together I was very angry," said Sustana, a Hawai'i Pacific University professor who lives in Hawai'i Kai. "It makes you feel unsafe in your own home. It was utter confusion because I thought I had forgotten something. You don't want to believe that your car was stolen."
Sustana was a victim of one of the more pervasive crimes in Hawai'i. In 2002, Hawai'i's crime rate for auto thefts was the third-highest in the nation. Recent statistics compiled for 2003, though, show that car thefts dipped slightly on O'ahu, which is home to more than 650,000 registered vehicles and the bulk of the state's cars.
In 2003, 8,253 cars were reported stolen, a 3 percent drop from 8,488 in 2002. Also in 2003, police began counting mopeds in the stolen-car category, suggesting that the number of actual passenger vehicles taken is lower.
Whether this means Hawai'i will still be third in the nation when the auto-theft rankings are released is not known because data from the Neighbor Islands have yet to be compiled. National Rankings for the other 49 states will not be available until the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual crime report is released in the fall.
Statistics show that Honolulu police have cleared less cases in 2003. In 2003, HPD cleared 408 car-theft cases, down from 464 in 2002. A case is cleared either by arrest or if police know who the thief is, but for reasons outside the control of law enforcement, they cannot make an arrest.
Lt. Hank Nobriga, head of HPD's auto-theft detail, said that while not a lot of arrests are made in stolen-car cases, police recover about 70 percent of the vehicles stolen on O'ahu. Of the cars that are recovered, Nobriga said, almost 20 percent of them have parts missing, such as seats, engines, and tires.
"Some vehicles are cut up, some we cannot identify, others are dumped in streams," Nobriga said. "The majority of the cars recovered, besides the steering column being stripped and door locks punched" are intact.
According to police, Honda Civics, Toyota Camrys, and Dodge Ram pickups are the most stolen vehicles on the island because they are easy to get into and there are a lot of them out there. He said high-end vehicles, such as Mercedes and BMWs, are difficult to steal because of their elaborate, computerized starting mechanisms.
Many high-end car manufacturers are also imbedding global positioning chips in their vehicles, making them easy to track once they are reported missing.
"Some people think when they get their car stolen, 'We live on an island, what's so hard in finding it?' " Nobriga said. "We have eight auto-theft detectives and 1,900 officers. What are the chances of one of those officers running across a stolen vehicle? We empathize with them (victims), but these guys that steal cars aren't dummies, either."
Nobriga said a lot of car thieves immediately switch license plates with legitimate vehicles or use the car to commit another crime, like burglaries or robberies, making it harder for police to trace them using license-plate information.
Before police can start looking for the car, it is usually abandoned.
Police identified three areas of Honolulu where the majority of car thefts take place: the downtown Makiki and Lunalilo areas, Pearl City and Wai'anae.
Nobriga said his unit knows of several chop shops operating in these areas. A chop shop is a place where stolen cars are taken and stripped of their valuable parts, which are then resold. Nobriga said the majority of the chop shops on O'ahu are in the Pearl City and Kalihi areas.
City prosecutors and police, who have stepped up their pursuit of car thieves in the island's problem areas, cite the ice epidemic as one of the main reasons for the high number of auto thefts here.
With cars being swiped at alarming rates in the Pearl City area, police have ratcheted up their charging guidelines for the district. Anyone caught operating a stolen car in the district is automatically charged, rather than released pending investigation. Police say this expedites the process of prosecuting suspects.
Jim Fulton, spokesman for the prosecutors office, said Senate Bill 284 asks for mandatory minimums for repeat offenders. If approved, the bill will increase prison time for first and repeat offenders.
Under the bill a first-time car thief would serve a year and eight months in prison and a second-time offender would face three years, four months behind bars.
Nobriga said car alarms are one way to deter thieves,but also suggested some common sense tips for protecting a car.
"Lock your doors and windows. Don't leave keys in the car," he said. "If you make your car difficult to steal they (the thieves) will just go somewhere else. Guys steal cars that they're comfortable with.
"They have to be gone in 60 seconds."
Reach Peter Boylan at 535-8110 or pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.
Correction: The number of car theft cases cleared by HPD in 2002 was incorrect in a previous version of this story.
