reported stolen in the city in
1990, one for every 12
registered here. Last year,
39,000 auto thefts were
reported, a decline of almost
74 percent.
By C. J. CHIVERS
It
has not been the cars that are vanishing lately in
New York
City. It has been the thieves.
During the last decade, as
crime declined throughout
the city, none of the major
felonies tracked by the
Police Department -- not
murder, not rape, not robbery
and not assault -- fell
as sharply as auto theft.
Nearly 147,000 cars were
reported stolen in the city
in
1990, one for every 12
registered here. Last year,
39,000 auto thefts were
reported, a decline of almost
74 percent.
New Yorkers are still more
likely to have their cars
stolen than residents of
most
other cities in the nation,
and
chop-shop crews and
organized-crime rings that
ship stolen cars overseas
persist. But law enforcement
and insurance experts say
technological advances and
crime-fighting strategies
have converged with such
success that thieves managed
to steal fewer cars in New
York last year than at any
time since 1965.
"The trend had been going
up and up and up," said Julie
Rochman, a spokeswoman for
the Highway Loss Data
Institute, an insurance
industry group in Arlington, Va.
"And now it's coming down."
Three factors have contributed
to the reversal, experts
said: the development of
better anti-theft devices for
higher priced cars and sport
utility vehicles, a police
crackdown on chop-shop "steal
men" and "cutters," and
the more aggressive prosecution
of those who are
caught.
"These things really started
coming together in the
mid-1990's," said Inspector
James C. Dean,
commander of the Police
Department's Auto Crime
Division. "We're seeing
that we have thousands of
fewer victims every year."
For some new models, the
reason for much of the
decline is clear. Robert
Arreaga, manager of Major
Chrysler-Plymouth-Jeep-Eagle
in Long Island City,
Queens, said many top-of-the-line
vehicles sold these
days were equipped with
immobilizer devices, a
computer chip in the key
that is required for ignition.
Unlike most cars, vehicles
equipped with these devices
cannot be started by jimmying
open the steering column
to bypass the ignition lock.
Studies by the Highway
Loss Data Institute show
that immobilizers have
slashed theft rates for
certain models by as much as 50
percent. They are now standard
in many high-end
vehicles, including Jeep's
Grand Cherokee line.
"Unless you have the security
key or a tow truck, you're
not going to move these
Jeeps," Mr. Arreaga said.
But the vast majority of
cars do not have these devices,
and even those that do can
simply be towed away by
determined thieves. Further,
while crime data compiled
by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation show that the
national auto theft rate
has been dropping, it has not
been falling nearly as sharply
as the rate in New York.
Experts say much of the trend
in New York has been
spurred by applying law
enforcement strategies long
used against organized crime
and narcotics rings to
fight car-theft operations.
"What you're seeing in New
York City is that dedicating
local law enforcement
agencies and prosecutors
to this has really made a
dent," said Marta Genovese,
a lobbyist for the
Automobile Club of New York.
To make this dent, the police
and prosecutors created
special squads of investigators,
made more frequent use
of wiretaps, stings and
undercover surveillance, and
executed more search warrants
than in years past.
"This has all been a part
of aggressive law enforcement
efforts," said Police Commissioner
Howard Safir.
Some of the effort has been
preventive, including
programs that distribute
windshield stickers to
cooperating car owners.
The stickers allow officers to
stop the cars on the road
between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m., or
any time a young driver
is behind the wheel.
Other measures stem from traditional tactics.
In the precincts, investigators
have made a point since
the mid-1990's of vigorously
questioning every thief
caught by patrol officers.
The goal has been to find
those willing to implicate
chop-shop owners and
provide fodder for future
investigations. "What we
want is for them to give
up intelligence," said Lt. David
Little of the Auto Crime
Division.
In the prosecutors' offices,
assistant district attorneys
have moved auto-theft cases
to a higher priority,
allowing fewer thieves to
plead guilty to lesser
misdemeanor charges. The
goal, prosecutors said, is to
ensure felony convictions
so that repeat offenders can
be sentenced to state prison.
"The mathematics became convincing,"
said George
Freed, a lawyer who handles
auto crimes in the Queens
district attorney's office.
"The experienced thief can
steal two or three cars
a week. If you put one of them in
jail, you may be preventing
100 or 150 thefts a year."
In raw numbers, nowhere are
the effects of these efforts
more evident than in Queens,
an area that crime
statistics show has been
almost magnetically attractive
to car thieves.
Queens has an abundance of
open parking lots near
shopping malls, high-rises
and hospitals, and it is
sprinkled with day lots
where commuters board trains
for Manhattan and leave
their cars unattended all day.
Further, more cars are registered
in Queens County than
anywhere else in the state
-- 675,897 in 1998,
according to the State Department
of Motor Vehicles.
This abundance of cars, many
of them concentrated and
unwatched for long periods
of time, had long fed the
chop-shop enterprises, allowing
them to build
inventories and client bases.
By the early 1990's, the
borough had so many of the
shops that District Attorney
Richard A. Brown, who himself
lost four cars to
thieves at his Forest Hills
home between 1988 and
1991, called Queens "the
auto theft capital of the state,
and perhaps even of the
nation."
"Wherever I went, it seemed
like there wasn't someone
who hadn't had a car stolen,"
said Mr. Brown, who
recalls seeing his daughter's
Camaro pulling away from
the curb -- without his
daughter in it. "I just got tired of
it."
By forming special anti-theft
units and bringing
racketeering charges against
larger enterprises, auto
thefts in the borough fell
from more than 50,000 in 1990
to 14,000 last year.
The decline has been noted
by Yvonne Reddick,
district manager of Community
Board 12 in Jamaica,
Queens, who for more than
10 years heard tales of
chop-shop handiwork over
the phone. Her neighbors
complained of squealing
tires, missing minivans and
heaps of junked parts in
vacant lots.
And then the complaints all but stopped.
"Someone called last week
about a stripped-out car,
but that was the first one
since summer," Ms. Reddick
said.
The decline has also been
noted by some insurance
underwriters. At State Farm
Insurance, for instance, the
mean premium for comprehensive
coverage, which
covers theft, has fallen
52 percent in Queens in the last
three years, according to
Patricia R. Floyd, a company
spokeswoman. (Because comprehensive
coverage
amounts to roughly one-sixth
the cost of a total
premium, overall rates have
not fallen as much.)
Interestingly, these declines
-- in theft rates and
premiums -- seem to have
passed with little notice on
the street. Even a casual
stroll through Queens
neighborhoods shows that
almost every car is equipped
with an anti-theft club,
and many show the telltale red
lights of a car alarm. Many
drivers seem incredulous
when told that auto theft
is less common.
Last week, Sungmi Choi of
Valley Stream, on Long
Island, parked her Grand
Cherokee in a lot at the end of
the No. 7 line in Flushing.
Six years ago, she said,
someone stole her Mercedes-Benz
from the same lot.
Two weeks ago, her friend's
Nissan Maxima
disappeared.
"I think it's still bad," she said.
The police say they understand
this sentiment. When
people lose their cars,
they lose money and time, as
well as all manner of belongings
upon which a weekly
routine depends -- tools,
briefcases, perhaps a baby
stroller or a pair of running
shoes.
"Until you've seen that empty
parking space where your
car was, you have no idea
how serious this crime is,"
said Deputy Chief Thomas
Fahey, a police spokesman.
Even Ms. Reddick, who knows
firsthand of the decline,
remains cautious. She keeps
her 1995 black Ford
Explorer behind a gate in
her driveway. It is equipped
with an alarm and a club.
Asked if she would pose for
a photograph with the
vehicle, she said no --
some of the thieves were still
out there. "Pictures? Of
my Explorer?" she said. "You
want it to be their target?"
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Case Illustrates Powerful Lure of Stolen-Car
Rings
Danny Domingo was a determined
cutter. Working
with a ring of thieves and racketeers who bought
protection from the Bonanno
crime family, Mr.
Domingo ran a chop-shop
operation that helped feed a
stolen-parts enterprise.
The police broke the ring
in 1995. Mr. Domingo went
to prison in 1996. He seemed
to be out of business.
But last year, as an inmate
participating in a state
work-release program, Mr.
Domingo returned to his
old trade, the police say.
Allowed to leave prison to
work in the community, he
was caught by the state
police with a dismantled
minivan and a burglary tool at
his home in Springfield
Gardens, Queens, according to
court records.
The police and prosecutors
say Mr. Domingo's case
illustrates the powerful
lure of organized auto theft.
Because profits are high
and sentences are generally
lighter than those for drug
crimes or violent offenses,
new thieves are regularly
recruited, and experienced
operators have trouble letting
go.
"If you're a car thief sitting
in prison, there is a
tendency to think the risk
of stealing again is minimal
because you've stolen so
many cars in your career, and
you've been caught so few
times," said Gerard A.
Brave, deputy chief of the
rackets division in the
Queens County district attorney's
office.
The 1995 case against Mr.
Domingo provided detailed
insight into the stolen-car
underworld. The prosecutors'
affidavits described two
men in Howard Beach,
Queens, and in East Rockaway,
Nassau County, who
took orders from body shops
for "noses" -- the front
ends of cars -- to repair
vehicles damaged in legitimate
accidents.
The men acted like dispatchers,
calling chop-shop
operators who deployed steal-to-order
thieves. Thieves
made $500 a car, prosecutors
said. Chop-shop
operators cleared as much
as $15,000 a week.
Mr. Domingo, who Mr. Brave
said had a stable of five
or six thieves and a chop
shop in Brooklyn, was a
midlevel operator, but a
successful one. "When they
searched his shop, he had
car parts stacked to the
ceiling," Mr. Brave said.
According to prosecutors,
the ring stored extra parts in
East Rockaway and tossed
out the "bones" of cars --
frames, seats and other
items with little resale value --
in neighborhoods. According
to court records, one of
Mr. Domingo's associates
paid the network's protection
tribute to Vincent Asaro,
a reputed capo in the Bonanno
crime family.
The Police Department and
prosecutors say these types
of operations are responsible
for the majority of thefts
in the city. They say that
as long as the rings exist,
experienced thieves and
cutters will be pulled back
into the industry, as Mr.
Domingo appeared to have
been when the remains of
a 1995 Plymouth Voyager,
owned by Lillie and Grady
Zeigler, turned up at his
home.
Mr. Zeigler, 51, of Jamaica,
Queens, remembers that
his daughter was having
a baby the morning his minivan
was stolen. He came home
and found a man in his yard.
He told the stranger to
leave.
The next time he went outside, his Voyager was gone.
"The way they operated, it
was like they knew where I
was," Mr. Zeigler said.
"They were here watching me."