Colorado slashes auto-theft rate with fusion center

Published 4 October 2011

In 2005 Colorado had one of the highest rates of vehicle theft in the country, but thanks to the dogged efforts of local law enforcement officials and the Auto Theft Intelligence Coordination Center the state is now below the national average

In 2005 Colorado had one of the highest rates of vehicle theft in the country, but thanks to the dogged efforts of local law enforcement officials and the Auto Theft Intelligence Coordination Center the state is now below the national average.

In just four years, the state cut its vehicle theft rate by 56 percent using a “fusion center” to collect, analyze, and distribute data to local law enforcement to help identify stolen cars or even prevent thefts.

We haven’t changed how we do auto theft since the 1970s, and that doesn’t work today,” said Sergeant Rich Smith of the Colorado State Patrol who runs the lab.

Unlike many other law enforcement agencies that consider car theft a property crime, Sergeant Smith views auto theft as a “transitional crime” in which criminals who steal cars are using them to kidnap, rob banks, or deliver drugs.

You are not going to take grandma’s car to the bank robbery,” he said.

Increasingly sophisticated technology like laser cut keys and license plate readers have made cars more difficult to steal, which has largely cleared the field of amateur car thieves and left the “true criminals,” Smith said.

According to data from the Colorado Judicial Branch, of the nearly 31,000 auto-theft cases in the past five years, roughly 75 percent involved another crime including murder, robbery, assault, and sexual assault.

The lab is funded by a $1 fee on vehicle insurance policies, which generates about $4 million a year for the Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority. The authority also gives cash to police and sheriff’s offices for the creation of auto-theft task forces and now the state has ten multi-jurisdictional task forces.

The lab was opened with the help of a $233,000 grant and Smith is applying for an additional $100,000 grant to automate theft reports and collect fifty pieces of additional information about each theft.

The additional data, which includes theft location, type of vehicle, method of entry, and color, will help analysts generate more accurate reports and even spot trends.

The data eventually hopes to have exact enough data and analysis to alert local police departments the date and time that it should patrol a certain area to prevent an auto theft.