The new mantra for the Portland Police Bureau’s stolen car missions is: fewer stops, better results.
That means catching people with stolen cars, before they’ve been trashed and abandoned, sometimes before the cars have been used for other crimes.
To achieve this goal, they are using a new methodology in data analysis, with the help, interestingly, of cancer doctors at OHSU.
Last year, during the police bureau’s monthly auto theft missions, officers took notes on typical features of a stolen car, ranging from a missing catalytic converter or license plate to to a broken window or erratic driving, and then they started analyzing the data.
The result: Officers on stolen car missions now have a tabulated list of evidence-backed factors to take much of the guesswork out of determining whether to stop a car.
“I’m not so naive as to suggest that these efforts are going to solve this problem,” said Kevin Allen, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office. “But we can’t just throw up our hands and say we can’t do anything because our staff is limited and we’re too busy. That’s not good enough for us.”
And the new approach seems to be working.
Before the data-driven missions, the stolen vehicle operation team, using experience and instinct, would find someone inside a stolen car at one of 31 stops, police said. They arrested someone at one out of every six stops. The odds of finding a gun were one in 144.
After the bureau began using evidence-based practice, the stolen car squad made far fewer stops, but one in six cars was stolen. And now someone is arrested for every three cars the team stops.
In their most recent mission, on Saturday, April 15, Eastern District officers stopped 33 cars, recovered 14 stolen vehicles, made 11 arrests and recovered two weapons.
Officers returned the stolen cars to their owners and gave them wheel locking devices to prevent them from being victimized again.
For many years, older models from Subaru, Honda and Ford have been the most stolen, and they are still at the top. But data shows that Kia and Hyundai models are now the main targets of car thieves.
More than 300 Kias (typically Soul, Optima and Sportage models) were stolen in Portland in January and February. Almost as many Hyundai cars were stolen, most commonly Elantra, Sonata or Tucson.
Several older Kia and Hyundai models do not have electronic immobilizers, which prevent thieves from easily breaking in and bypassing the ignition. All new cars now have factory fitted immobilizers. Thefts of these older, more vulnerable cars have been popularized by social media trends like the “Kia Challenge” and videos demonstrating how to steal them.
A handful of cities, including Seattle, have joined lawsuits against South Korean automakers, saying the companies haven’t done enough to make their cars harder to steal.
Mayor Ted Wheeler supports cities’ attempts to hold auto companies accountable and is not opposed to Portland doing something similar, mayoral spokesman Cody Bowman said in an email.
But he added that the city is “currently focused on more immediate, on-the-ground solutions to help deter and recover from car theft in Portland.”
In the first two months of 2023, the highest number of burglaries (74) in Portland was recorded in the Northwest District, which is not usually a hot spot.
Cars are recovering pretty much at the same rate as in previous years. About 83 percent of stolen vehicles are recovered within 30 days, according to data from the Portland Police Bureau.
So far, 93% of the more than 11,000 cars stolen in 2022 have been recovered.
In 2021, Portland ranked fifth in the nation for car thefts per capita. That’s reason enough for police to address the problem, but the bureau is focusing on the “clear trend that vehicle theft is a precursor to other, usually more violent crimes,” he said in a press release recent
“We find that people who steal cars are also involved in drug abuse or trafficking and often carry illegal weapons,” Allen said in an email.
This made the agents of the stolen car missions in 2022 begin to rigorously mark the characteristics of each car and the behavior of the driver that led them to stop on suspicion.
The specific list of identifiable patterns is not being made public because it could impede investigations, the office said, but insisted the pilot’s career was not considered.
Soon, officers had enough data that they, along with OHSU scientists, could analyze for patterns, which has helped police make fewer stops with more precision.
The bureau’s strategic services division has the capacity to do this kind of data analysis, but the team is small and very busy, Allen said, so about a year ago the bureau asked for help to Dr. Jeffrey Tyner, Office Scientist and Professor. OHSU Knight Cancer Institute.
Tyner, an expert in collecting and analyzing large data sets, is a close friend of one of the officers on the police stolen car missions in the East Precinct.
What started as a conversation between friends turned into collaborative team meetings; Tyner and his team of scientists reviewed the police bureau’s data for free.
Their peer review provided advice and feedback on best practices for data collection, organization and management, Tyner said in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive.
This new data-driven approach to stolen car missions has been a clear success for the Portland Police Bureau, but it remains to be seen whether it will lead to fewer cars in the city.
So far, the signs are not good. Reported car thefts for the first two months of 2023 show that Portland auto thefts are still on pace.
In January and February, 1,789 vehicles were reported stolen in the city. That means Portland is on track to see more than 10,000 burglaries in a year, and that doesn’t take into account the spike in car thefts that usually happens during the summer months. Last year, the more than 11,000 reported car thefts in Portland were the highest on record.
The numbers for car thefts, Allen acknowledged, are “staggering.”
– Savannah Eadens; seadens@oregonian.com; 503-221-6651; @savannaheadens
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