Task force tackling auto thefts making its mark

ST. LOUIS -- A task force commissioned last summer to slow the city's number of auto thefts appears to be making its mark, curbing the crime's frequency over the final three months of 2003, police said. Records show that a vehicle was stolen in St. Louis every 52 minutes in last year's final quarter, when the task force was operating. That compares with one stolen every 46 minutes in 2002's final quarter and every 44 minutes in the first nine months of 2003, before the crackdown. Under the initiative since Aug. 1, there have been about 330 arrests. Given cooperation between the task force and city prosecutors, records show, two-thirds of the arrests have resulted in criminal charges -- about double the rate of charges issued on stolen-car arrests made by uniformed officers.

The task force makes one or two arrests nightly, modest numbers in a city that had 11,296 auto thefts last year. To Lt. Ed Kuntz, the commander, it's like "draining an ocean with a ladle."

Police once went after auto thieves as they noticed them, sometimes ending in crashes including one in 2002 that killed Officer Michael Barwick. But attacking vehicle theft now is a high police priority, worthy of stealthy tactics and a new strategy aimed at making arrests with minimum risk.

Mirroring trickery employed in many other big cities, St. Louis police have embraced using unattended "bait" vehicles with satellite-based tracking systems. The systems can by remote kill the engine of a moving stolen vehicle, slowing it to a stop and locking its doors, trapping the hapless suspect for police.

A surveillance camera stashed inside the vehicle even records the action -- a virtual "Candid Camera" for criminals, coming to a courtroom near you.

Now, officers say they find rocks or bricks in many of the stolen cars they recover -- the kinds of things suspects say they carry to smash their way out if they accidentally steal a "bait car."

Still, no one knows specifically why the theft rate has fallen.

Some speculate that perhaps police have arrested enough of the thieves -- or enough significant ones -- to make an impact. Perhaps media coverage of the unit has deterred thieves, or more St. Louisans have bought anti-theft devices. Or perhaps the culprits -- largely boys and young men bent on joy-riding -- have moved on to something else.

Police also believe it increasingly is known on the street that they have turned to more unmarked cars and plainclothes officers.

Jennifer Joyce, the city's prosecutor, said her office had eased the way for victims to press charges by letting them certify by phone that they did not give anyone else permission to drive their vehicles.

She said she also was seeking to set aside a day weekly for the city's grand jury to hear nothing but auto-theft cases, thereby paring the number of cases set for preliminary hearings that encumber busy courts and consume victims' time and energy.

City judges increasingly are setting prohibitively high bail for repeat car thieves, in some cases as much as $20,000.