“Our passion is to get out there and find stolen cars,” Officer Jeff Mitchell said as KIRO 7 rode along with him on patrol.
Mitchell, who’s been chasing down car thieves in Seattle for 18 years, uses what’s called automated license plate recognition technology to track thieves down.
The Seattle Police Department has a total of nine ALPR cars: one for each of the five precincts, plus one for the K-9 unit and three for parking enforcement.
The technology can cost more than $20,000.
Cameras are mounted on top of the car to read license plates as officers drive along and check for stolen vehicles.
“It basically goes faster than you can snap your fingers,” Mitchell said.
The ALPR cars have been essential in the department’s efforts to reduce auto theft this year.
When SPD released auto theft numbers in August, they were up 44 percent over last year.
Captain Eric Sano, who oversees the Major Crimes Task Force as well as other coordinated investigations, said part of the problem dates back to 2008 and 2009, when police went after a number of prolific car thieves.
“We put a number of these auto thieves in prison,” he said. “Well now, five years later, which is the maximum sentence for auto thieves, they're getting out.”
Teens have also been behind thefts, police said, breaking into dealerships along Lake City Way.
Police said areas like park and rides are vulnerable. They pointed to the park and ride at Northgate Mall. Malls, they said, with rows and rows of cars, are also easy targets.
“It's kind of easy pickings for people,” Mitchell said.
There are also areas of the city that see more thefts than others.
“Twenty-five percent of our auto thefts occur between the south and southwest precinct, which is a pretty large geographic area,” Sano said. “But the rest, 75 percent, are occurring between the downtown area and the north precinct, [with] the north precinct catching most of the brunt of that.”
KIRO 7 checked SPD crime reports, which show concentrations of auto thefts downtown from Bell Street down to South Main Street.
Police said they also see thefts around Market Street in Ballard where people tend to shop, the lower part of Capitol Hill between Broadway and Interstate 5, and areas right near the highway.
“Five thousand auto thefts for a year,” Sano said. “That’s five thousand victims here in our city.”
Since August, though, the city started using SeaSTAT, a system that maps our crime trends with real-time data and community reports.
The King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office has assigned a deputy prosecuting attorney to focus on car thefts, and Sano’s Major Crimes Task Force, which had most recently zeroed in on areas like narcotics and fraud, is now on auto thefts.
“This year, one of the things that Chief O’Toole tasked us to do was to look at the auto thefts and to bring them down,” Sano said. “Basically, she told me, ‘Captain Sano, I want auto thefts down.’”
According to SeaSTAT, as of November, the spike had dropped to 34 percent, progress that the owner of Gasoline Alley, Tony Caballero, can attest to.
He had seven cars stolen from his dealership the morning of Nov. 24th.
“Came down here, just looked around, kind of in shock,” Caballero said.
The cars stolen included a high-end Mercedes and a couple BMWs.
“They were actually on it right away,” he said of police. “I was surprised. They got the cars pretty much that morning or close to the afternoon.”
Most had minor scratches of some kind. One was totaled.
Police arrested the teens responsible in Seattle and believe they’re connected to the Lake City dealership thefts.
Mitchell, who was a part of those arrests, said each day is kind of like fishing.
“Get out there and try to catch as many as I can in a day,” he said. “Get those cars back to their owners.”
Sano said the department would like to have two ALPR for every precinct, but they’re trying to figure out if and where they could find the funding.