Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Car thieves get snakebit

1. 1996 Honda Accord

2. 1995 Honda Civic

3. 1990 Toyota Camry

4. 1994 Saturn SL

5. 1992 Nissan Sentra

6. 2004 Dodge Ram pickup truck

7. 1988 Toyota pickup truck

8. 1998 Dodge Neon

9. 2001 Ford F-150 Series

10. 1993 Jeep Cherokee/Grand Cherokee

It started with a stolen car; a Metro Police officer pulled the driver over Nov. 21, made the arrest, but thought there might be more to it. The officer alerted Metro's VIPER, an auto theft investigation unit, which looked into the matter and within 48 hours was conducting surveillance on four houses, seven people and 11 stolen vehicles.

It was a ring of car thieves with a taste for pickup trucks, and VIPER - short for Vehicle Investigation Project for Enforcement and Recovery - arrested all seven major players by Thanksgiving Day, according to Lt. Robert Duvall, who oversees Metro's auto theft bureau.

The ring is one of the largest VIPER has shut down since June, when the auto theft bureau was reorganized to better tackle Las Vegas' unfortunate distinction as the city with the second-highest auto-theft rate in the nation in 2005.

The reorganization seems to be working: Metro statistics show a drop in auto thefts for the first time in three years.

Police created two VIPER units, including one that investigates large auto theft rings.

In August, two months after the reorganization, the number of auto thefts began to fall. Over the last four months, 6,391 cars were stolen - down almost 9 percent from the 7,012 cars stolen in the same months last year.

This rise and fall of theft statistics is still better than anything seen in the three years prior, where only once, in October 2004, did the number of auto thefts fall from the year earlier.

"What we have done here is just try to introduce some focus," Duvall said. "So far, it's serving us well. The numbers finally seem to be turning in our direction."

In Las Vegas, 22,465 cars were stolen last year - roughly one car every 25 minutes. That's second only to Modesto, a central California city of 190,000 people, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), an insurance organization that ranks the top cities for auto theft per capita annually. All of the top 10 cities for car theft are in the West, six in California.

Roughly 75 percent of Las Vegas auto thieves steal cars for transportation or joy-riding, Duvall said. The remaining quarter of auto thefts are cars stolen by what police describe as professional auto thieves, often knowledgeable criminals who work in groups to target specific cars, selling or stripping them for profit.

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The ring of thieves that VIPER caught late last month was stealing Ford vans and Ford and Dodge Ram pickup trucks in particular - vehicles that, generally speaking, suggest the thief is using the stolen vehicle to commit other crimes, such as stealing construction equipment or copper wiring, Duvall said.

VIPER investigators were able to link the ring through a common address on Balzar Avenue, which le d police to suspects and stolen cars throughout Las Vegas. With a court case pending, however, and another house still under surveillance, Duvall is hesitant to give many details.

"These things start to snowball," he said. "Why were they stealing the cars? We have our ideas. The investigation has le d us to a certain path, but the real reason, unless they tell us, we'll never truly know."

Metro's VIPER team worked with officials from the NICB to shut down the auto-theft ring.

Warren Donaldson, a senior special agent for the NICB in Las Vegas, said the auto-theft ring consisted of a group of men and women working together to steal "high-end cars," quite possibly making a "tremendous" amount of money in the process.

The satisfaction of taking down the ring is dwarfed by Donaldson's frustration with Las Vegas' ongoing auto-theft problem; since 2003, when Las Vegas had the nation's fourth-highest auto-theft rate, the city has moved up one step in the national ranking every year.

"It just kind of takes the wind out of my sails every time," Donaldson said. "Everybody has been (stealing cars). Everybody thinks it's so easy."

The NICB is expected to announce 2006 rankings around April, spokesman Frank Scafidi said. Duvall hopes the latest bust, which was completed in a matter of days, is a sign of things to come.

"Next year will be a real telling year," he said. "They work together to steal them, and we work together to catch them."

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