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Meanwhile, conventional car theft has been exploding too. The motives tend to vary from city to city. Newark has a serious problem with joyriders, usually teenagers, who steal cars and perform "doughnuts," in which they lock the brakes, step on the gas, and send the car spinning in circles. Some do it in front of police cars, in the hopes of inspiring a chase. One night last November, three kids stole a new Honda, drove across a side street, hit a bump in the road, took off, sheared a power pole in half, took another pole out and brought the electric lines down on top of them, and all three burned to death. "When you try to pry these kids out of these cars and see people get run over by them," asks Captain Fanning, "what the hell joy does anybody see in it?"
In other major cities, the motive is largely commercial. Police say more than half of the thefts are committed by organized car rings that chop up stolen cars and resell the parts or ship them across borders. (See following story.) Overall, about a quarter of stolen cars end up in chop shops, where they are taken apart and resold for as much as triple their value whole. Two skilled choppers with power tools can cut up a car from hood to trunk in three minutes. The demand is huge: a thief can steal a $10,000 Nissan Sentra, strip it and sell the parts for $20,000 to $25,000. While luxury cars are always tempting, among the most popular cars to steal, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, are: the Pontiac Firebird, Chevrolet Camaro, Mitsubishi Starion, Toyota MR2 and Chrysler Conquest.
The explosion in car theft, and even more the fear of it, has inspired an army of entrepreneurs eager to cash in on what has become a $500 million to $600 million annual security business. As many as 90% of the luxury cars sold in California are equipped with antitheft devices either in the factory or at the dealership. There are glass sensors, tiny microphones that set off an alarm if they pick up the tinkling of broken glass. Motion sensors and shock sensors go off if the car is jolted or bounced. Clifford Electronics Inc. offers a remote-triggering device that shuts off the car's electronics, so that when a carjacker gets a block or so away from the carjacking scene, the owner can hit a transmitter and stop the car dead. Among the newer devices on the market are electronic tracking systems like LoJack and Teletrac, which cost between $500 and $750 and allow police to track stolen vehicles with an electronic signal. But thieves have already come up with devices that can detect whether a car is sending out a tracking signal, allowing them to pass up such cars or locate the tracking device and disarm it.
The safety tips that police officers provide drivers would sound uselessly obvious, were it not for the fact that people ignore them all the time. Keep a distance between cars, they advise. Avoid unfamiliar neighborhoods. Try to avoid the lane next to the curb. Don't leave the car running when you dash into the convenience store. Lock the doors. Keep purses and wallets out of view. "No. 1, be aware," says the FBI's Apple. "In this day and age, it's not safe to unroll your window -- even to give people money at Christmas."