Vehicle thefts up 87% in one Johnson County city. Are lax prosecutions the problem?

You’ve no doubt taken precautions to protect yourself from the COVID-19 pandemic. Are you protecting yourself against the other epidemic going on right now?

Car theft.

This is no false alarm. Cities in Johnson County alone saw double-digit increases in vehicle thefts last year — Lenexa’s increase coming in at a whopping 87%. Overland Park car thefts rose 32%, while Shawnee’s jumped 39%.

Officers across the county say car theft is a crime of convenience, and too many owners are making it far too convenient — leaving doors unlocked, keys inside or vehicles running during a dash inside the house or convenience store. It’s a particular problem in cold weather. One Lenexa resident last fall ran inside the house to deposit packages and emerged to find the vehicle gone.

“There are actually thieves who are prowling neighborhoods, especially in the morning time, looking just for that,” says Public Information Officer Danny Chavez of the Lenexa Police Department. “Driving around in pairs, and as soon as they see a car running that’s unoccupied, one of those individuals will get out of their car, go and steal the victim’s car, then both vehicles take off.”

Yes, it happens that quickly, and in what we think of as the safest of neighborhoods.

“We’ve got it on video,” agrees Shawnee Police Department Major Jim Baker, “where they just walk along, try doors — if they can open the door, all they have to do is stick their foot on the brake and push the button. If it starts, they steal the car. If it doesn’t, they go to the next.

“This isn’t just speculation. We’re seeing what the M.O. is.”

Indeed, Overland Park police say 75% of that city’s stolen vehicles had been running or had keys inside.

“Crooks are coming into your neighborhoods looking for you to leave your car warming up in the morning to defrost,” Chavez adds.

Sometimes the thieves stop at a car wash to sort through valuables and paperwork and to dump what they don’t want.

One alert self-serve car wash owner, Brian Underwood of Kansas City, Kansas, this week found two piles of papers on his lot containing sensitive financial information that a car’s owner would never have left on the ground.

Underwood tracked down the owner and provided car wash video and still photos of the suspects — not only for police but for the ad hoc “Stolen KC” Facebook page, where victims post “be-on-the-lookout” notices. It was actually the Facebook post that cracked the case. Underwood said a suspect in the photos reached out to the victim and arranged to have his car returned.

All credit to Underwood, who went to great lengths to solve the case — one of five confirmed stolen vehicles he’s seen come through his car wash in the past three years.

But absent such alert and civic-minded citizens as Underwood, unless vehicles otherwise show up abandoned, as they sometimes do, solving car thefts is rare. In fact, Shawnee’s Maj. Baker said he once had his own personal car stolen. It never resurfaced.

“It’s frustrating,” he says.

Kansas police ignored video of suspects in Gladstone

Adding to the frustration is the difficulty of prosecuting the occasional known suspect, which requires elusive proof, as well as police and prosecutors with dogged determination. It’s not always the case: Underwood reports that in one instance, he offered video of suspects in a car theft out of Gladstone over on the Missouri side of the metropolitan area — which the detective there had no interest in coming to pick up.

While a friend to many in law enforcement, Underwood says he’s disheartened by the all-too-frequent lack of interest in solving felony property crimes: “I haven’t been real impressed with what I’ve seen.”

For his part, Chavez said a lack of zeal in solving those crimes is not a problem in Lenexa, where he says civilian specialists — former career detectives — are assigned precisely to collect video surveillance involving Lenexa cases.

“I can promise you if there’s video that we’re aware of in crimes involving Lenexa investigations, we will go to collect that,” Chavez says. “We have detectives assigned specifically to do that.”

By and large, however, Underwood chalks up much of the increase in vehicle thefts across Kansas City to a lack of prosecution.

“There are no consequences associated with the bad behavior,” Underwood argues. “If you’re in possession of a stolen car and you know that the authorities are reluctant or unwilling to prosecute, why not steal cars?”

Whatever the public’s frustrations with vehicle thefts, law enforcement has its own — chief among them the propensity of overly trusting Kansas Citians to leave doors unlocked, keys inside, or cars running.

“I would just like for everybody to lock their cars to help prevent the crime. And not leave their key fobs in them,” Baker says.

Why take precautions against one epidemic but not another?

This story was originally published January 22, 2021 at 5:00 AM.