A closer look at car thefts

The study, conducted by the University of the District of Columbia’s Institute for Public Safety and Justice, looked at some 48,500 auto thefts in the District between Jan. 1, 1998, to July 26, 2004.

The study found an increase in auto thefts between 1998 and 2004. Of those thefts, 44 percent occurred between 7 and 11 p.m.

The study also found that areas where two unrelated people lived together, in a roommate situation for example, have high rates of motor vehicle theft, said Angelyn Spaulding Flowers, author of the study and co-director of the institute.

The downtown area bounded by Pennsylvania and New York avenues from Fifth to 15th streets Northwest had nearly 650 cars stolen during the study period, she said. The neighborhood had a low juvenile population but a high density of parking garages.

In the block-by-block statistics, areas with high juvenile populations, unemployment rates and rental rates had more cars stolen, according to the data.

The 2300 block of Good Hope Road Southeast, the 4200 block of East Capitol Street and the 4600 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue Southwest topped the list with the most cars stolen over the study period, with 287, 160 and 119, respectively.

“The numbers seem to be a bit dated to me and the auto theft trends have changed,” said Sgt. James Manning with the Metropolitan Police Department’s auto theft unit, who noted there has been about a 20 percent reduction regionwide in auto theft in the past year.

He said multijurisdictional enforcement, prosecution and intervention programs have helped reduce auto thefts in the District by more than 600 cars so far this year.

He called the study “beneficial” since he had never looked into the details covered in the report, such as household income and population changes. “The study gives us a different way of looking at things,” he said.

Older cars without sophisticated antitheft systems are more commonly stolen in the District, with the 1996 Honda Accord leading the pack, said John Townsend, a AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesman.

“Every 25.5 seconds a car is stolen in the United States and it can happen to you,” he warned.