Buffalo vehicle thefts still high, but down in 2024

A Kia owner, he quickly realized he was the latest victim of Buffalo’s spate of car thefts.

Police recovered his car during the day and called him to the Dart Street impound lot. The thieves had left burnt sticks in the doors and searched and stole his belongings. His insurance company dropped his policy.

Gormley says he was relatively lucky to get his rental car back so quickly.

Yet the sense of violation and frustration that accompanies personal property crimes remains, especially with the casual attitude displayed by the thieves who stole his car.

“The two men who stole the car, as they were pulling out of the driveway, even honked their horns several times as they were getting out,” Gormley said.

Although car thefts remain high in Buffalo and Western New York, it appears the numbers are on the decline. Buffalo Police Department data shows a 38% drop through May 28 of this year, compared to the same period in 2023.

Still, this doesn’t bring the numbers closer to those that existed before the Kia Challenge spread on social media and encouraged Kia thefts. Only 673 vehicles were reported stolen in Buffalo in 2019, the lowest number in the seven-year period of data provided to The Buffalo News by the police department. This number increased to 1,393 in 2022. Last year, this number doubled to 2,885.

Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said car theft has always been a crime committed primarily by young people. But after it became widely known through social media that Hyundai and Kia vehicles were easy to break into and start, young people no longer had to rely on vehicle owners letting their car engine running or keys in the car, the most common ways people committed car thefts before.

“With the advent of the Kia and Hyundai Challenge, it was a complete game changer, leading to our dramatic and significant increase,” Gramaglia said.

And the data also indicates that car thieves are younger. In 2017, 18% of all people arrested for car theft in Buffalo were 17 or younger. Last year, that figure rose to 43 percent. Through the end of March of this year, 60 percent of those arrested were not considered adults by the justice system, according to data from the Buffalo Police Department.

Acting Erie County Prosecutor Michael Keane said he has seen a slight increase since 2019 in the number of car theft cases referred to his office involving defendants 17 and younger. But those numbers can be misleading, because his office only sees cases that rise to the level of criminal prosecution, moved out of family court because of the seriousness of the crime.

“It’s a problem we didn’t see 10 years ago, where they were stealing cars here three, four, five times in a matter of weeks,” he said.

Gramaglia and Keane said they have been fighting to get more cases moved out of family court and into criminal court, but have found that process difficult.

Juvenile and adolescent delinquent status offers lighter sentences and, most often, is handled in family court, a separate system that works with parents and young offenders to try to find solutions that do not do not include incarceration.

First-time offenders are typically charged with the misdemeanor of unauthorized use of a vehicle for car theft, with the exception of other charges such as reckless driving, weapons charges, or using the vehicle to commit other crimes. crimes.

Gramaglia said officers in his department know many repeat offenders by name.

“There are a small number of juvenile and teenage delinquents who steal these cars,” he said.

In late April, a 14-year-old girl was arrested for one felony and two misdemeanor charges related to car thefts on consecutive days.

“It doesn’t matter how many times they get arrested,” Gramaglia said. “They will be released immediately and nothing will happen to them in family court unless they ultimately kill someone.” »

And Keane said that sometimes it has been difficult, even when a teenager has been arrested multiple times for vehicle thefts, to convince the family court to refer his case to his office.

“It’s been an uphill battle for us,” he said.

But certain changes, both on the streets and in the courts, could help reverse the trend in the number of thefts.

Keane said his office recently created a new unit, devoting more experienced attorneys to prosecuting vehicle thefts, and that it has paid off. In cases his office handles involving teenage offenders, judges have become more likely to hand down harsher sentences.

“We place them before the grand jury, indict them and indict them for crimes,” he said. “And when we do that, and we put them in a state prison, one, they can’t steal a car anymore, and two, I think it sends a message to the community that we’re taking this much more seriously. serious. “

Gramaglia said he couldn’t control changes to state law or how the justice system treated juvenile offenders. But his department and others are using strategies that he says are contributing to the current decline in numbers.

One method is to raise public awareness, reminding people to use anti-theft devices and use common sense to make cars harder to steal, including locking doors and removing keys.

Another issue is the increased reliance on helicopters from partner departments, primarily the Erie County Sheriff’s Office and New York State Police, to help safely recover stolen cars when possible.

“Depending on what the helicopter shouts above, our cars will be parallel, they will stay in the area, then as soon as they take off, the helicopter announces the direction to the occupants and our guys will swoop in and they” I will catch them and we will make arrests,” Gramaglia said.

Helicopters are particularly useful because many young people who repeatedly steal cars know that most police departments, including Buffalo, do not have a chase policy, which was put in place to avoid dangerous chases in residential areas.

Some, realizing police won’t pursue them because of the policy, will approach patrol cars and call officers, Gramaglia said.

“They actually stop in front of police cars and make fun of our police cars,” he said.

Lt. Ryan Rogers of the Erie County Sheriff’s Office has been piloting the department’s helicopter since 2019. The number of calls from Buffalo Police and other departments to assist in stolen vehicle pursuits has increased exponentially , did he declare.

“We recognize the danger posed to the public by high-speed vehicle pursuits, and it is a risk that agencies have been trying to mitigate for several years,” Rogers said.

The sheriff’s helicopter can track stolen vehicles without having to be closely pursued by patrol cars or engage in a high-speed chase, posing a risk to officers, the public and offenders, a- he declared.

“We’ve had huge success and they continue to come to us because this method has proven to be very effective,” Rogers added.

And Gramaglia said his department uses the same microgrid system it deploys in violence prevention to map stolen cars and where they are dropped off, then sends out patrols to create a presence in hot spots car thefts.

“When we send our detectives out there and patrol the scene, we know where the hot spots are for dropping off stolen cars,” he said.

Gramaglia said he hoped the courts would impose harsher penalties in vehicle theft cases to create a more deterrent effect.

“Given what has happened in recent years, judges need to take a much tougher stance and set the tone so that word gets out that there will be consequences,” he said.