Crime of convenience

Watch your Hondas. In 2006, the popular import was stolen nearly a hundred times in Spokane Valley.

Honda Accords were the Valley’s most-stolen vehicle with 54 taken last year, according to crime analysts for the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office. The Honda Civic was second at 43.

However the real shocker wasn’t what thieves were stealing, but rather how often the car heists occurred. In Spokane Valley 711 vehicles were stolen last year, up 108 from the year before. There are some snowmobiles and other off-road machines in the theft figure, but most of what’s stolen is cars 10 years old or older.

Honda models held the top-two spots, but the American-made Saturn SL was third with 32 stolen. Toyota Camry, a five-finger discount of choice in 2005, was a distant fourth with 22 stolen. American trucks, stolen 95 times in 2005, rarely registered in 2006. In fact, trucks of all kinds were stolen only 15 times.

What gets stolen, said Spokane police Sgt. Laurie Miller, is a matter of convenience more than preference. Crime reports for 2006 are riddled with thefts in which the perpetrator actually had keys for the car stolen. Repeatedly, those keys were “shaved,” meaning they were originally for another vehicle, but were altered by the thief to work in many cars of the same model.

“The shaved keys have made it easier,” Miller said. “Once they figure out how to do it, they share with other criminals and it becomes an epidemic.”

Spotting a criminal stealing a car with a shaved key can be nearly impossible, as the perpetrator simply walks up to a vehicle, whips out a key to unlock the door, gets inside, starts up the car and drives away. Nail files or grinders are sometimes used to shave the keys, but police also say thieves have been known to simply work a key’s sharp edges over with a rock.

In Seattle, shaved keys became such a problem that last year the Seattle City Council made possessing shaved keys punishable by up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine – with or without a stolen vehicle.

There’s no telling how many Spokane Valley car thefts involved shaved keys. Crime reports merely indicate whether a car was broken into or had its ignition tampered with or was stolen with a key. The Veradale neighborhood of Fourth Avenue and Sullivan Road for example had 17 cars stolen with keys in 2006. Only one of those thefts was positively identified as a shaved-key crime.

Incidentally, that neighborhood was the worst area for Spokane Valley car thefts in 2006, according to Spokane County crime statisticians. January was the only month the neighborhood didn’t experience a car theft. By year’s end, 35 vehicles had been stolen there.

Many of those thefts near Fourth and Sullivan occurred at apartment complexes. High-density housing there starts on the eastern edge of Sullivan Road and continues east along Fourth for roughly three blocks.

“My basic theory on the apartment complexes is that the vehicles tend to be older vehicles, which don’t have the security features in their ignitions,” Miller said.

There are also a lot of vehicles left out in the open in apartment complex parking lots, giving thieves plenty to look over. At night when residents are in bed, criminals can work the lots over with impunity.

Nearly every Spokane Valley intersection where apartment complexes are clustered showed up as a car theft problem area in 2006. However the second-worst area for car thefts was Spokane Valley Mall, where 16 cars were stolen, according to the Sheriff’s Department. Six of those car thefts occurred during the Christmas shopping season.

The closest thing to an upside to the 2006 vehicle thefts, according to statisticians, was that 87 percent of cars stolen in Spokane Valley were recovered. Investigators believe thieves often used the cars solely for transportation, dumping them off down the street from wherever they were going or wherever they stopped to steal another car.

There are no sure ways to keep a car from being stolen.

“It’s tough for law enforcement to come up with those answers,” Miller said. “But for those driving older cars, basically I suggest common sense stuff. Park in a well-lit area. If you are hearing things in your parking lot or see a lot of people who don’t belong, call us.”