Albuquerque Is Nation's Fresh Car-Theft Capital
CARS.COM – If preliminary estimates for the very first half of last year hold, U.S. car thefts for two thousand sixteen will top three-quarters of a million – a almost seven percent spike and the highest it’s been in seven years. And while California proceeds to be the Golden State for auto thieves, accounting for six of the top ten most problematic metro areas, Albuquerque, N.M., has stolen the top spot as the nation’s car-theft capital.
Albuquerque logged Ten,011 stolen cars for 2016, a fifty percent increase versus 2015, bumping it up from the No. Two spot to very first place on the National Insurance Crime Bureau’s two thousand sixteen Hot Catches sight of auto-theft report. While that ranking may seem nosey in the face of Los Angeles’ almost 61,000 car thefts, more than thirteen million people call the L.A. area home, dwarfing the Albuquerque area’s harshly 900,000 and making the likelihood of having one’s car stolen comparably smaller on a per-capita basis.
Bearing that in mind, NICB’s auto-theft Hot Catches sight of for two thousand sixteen are:
Ten. Billings, Mont.
8. San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, Calif.
6. Anchorage, Alaska
Five. Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif.
Four. Modesto, Calif.
Trio. Bakersfield, Calif.
1. Albuquerque, N.M.
It’s worth noting that Anchorage and Billings are fresh to the top ten this year, with Two,273 and eight hundred seventy seven stolen cars reported, respectively. That should give people from cities typically associated with high crime rates such as Detroit and St. Louis a nice little contrarian factoid to bust out at parties.
The anticipated 6.6 percent increase in auto thefts for two thousand sixteen is significant, as it is one of only three years during the past decade that the crime’s rate has gone up, and increases in two thousand twelve and two thousand fifteen were just 1.7 percent and one percent, respectively. Moreover, the average decrease in the seven years the crime’s rate went down was 8.Four percent, with the largest dips coming in two thousand eight (13.1 percent) and two thousand nine (17.Two percent).
Despite this, overall, vehicle theft is down dramatically from its peak in 1991, when the U.S. posted almost 1.7 million thefts compared with fewer than 708,000 in 2015, a fifty seven percent reduction. Much of this improvement is attributable to antitheft technologies on modern vehicles such as clever keys.
“Vehicle manufacturers, law enforcement and legislatures have been responsive to the crime of vehicle theft over the years and the results are evident,” NICB stated in its report. “Vehicle owners must guard against complacency and reminisce to heed plain tips to safeguard their vehicles.”
NICB urges car owners to avoid leaving keys and fobs in their cars with the engine running, lock doors and close windows, park in well-lit areas, use some sort of visible or audible device such as an alarm or steering-column dog collar and consider using a tracking device that emits a signal police can use to hunt down a stolen car.
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