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Vehicle Theft Skyrocketed in America in 2020, High-Tech Crime Rings Share The Blame

A short time ago, we showed you how the New York City Police Department busted a high-tech car theft ring that terrorized the Bronx for months. Unfortunately, a rise in car theft is not at all limited to the Big Apple. It’s a phenomenon skyrocketing across the country, and some are placing the blame on the current health crisis.
Car thefts 6 photos
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News networks across the nation, from Louisville, Kentucky, to Hartford, Connecticut, to Madison, Wisconsin, have all reported a dramatic uptick in the number of car-related thefts.

One estimate from the National Insurance Crime Bureau was over 880,000 vehicles were stolen in the United States in the year 2020. That works out to one vehicle stolen every 30 seconds or so.

Investigators in the recent New York City car-theft ring bust placed a portion of the blame on the ongoing public health crisis, which has left many vulnerable Americans stuck indoors, defenseless against would-be criminals.

The rise in counterfeit vehicle software from black market online dealers has made it easier than ever to enter a stolen vehicle and drive away without alerting the authorities has also contributed to this alarming trend.

In stark difference to spikes in car theft of the past, this one has not been limited to large urban areas. The Hartford Courant, for instance, noted how recent theft spikes had avoided cities with large populations in Connecticut like Hartford and New Haven.

Instead, smaller towns with populations less than 50 thousand have bared the brunt of this surge. In the era of ever-changing public health codes, smaller communities seem to be the most vulnerable.

American police departments are hard at work to thwart large and small auto-theft operations. Insight from the latest NYPD sting may be instrumental in understanding and compensating for the behavior of the next generation of high-tech car thieves.
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