Cargo, not fuel, drives vehicle thefts in the Rio Grande Valley

They're apparently not thrifty thieves.

Despite gas prices that hit record highs this summer, law enforcement officials in the Rio Grande Valley said they have seen little to no effect on the type of vehicles most often reported stolen this year.

Gas-guzzling pickups and SUVs are still all the rage, not fuel-efficient hybrids and compact cars.

The reasoning comes back to plain old functionality.

Across the nation, criminal operations steal Hondas in massive quantities: They're easily chopped up for parts and sold.

But in the Valley, trucks and SUVs are the thing: Thieves can then use the vehicles to smuggle drugs, illegal aliens and stolen goods across the border.

``There's plenty of use for pickups and SUVs in the Valley for trafficking narcotics,'' said Brownsville Police Chief Carlos Garcia, whose department heads the South Texas Auto Theft Enforcement Task Force. ``That's what they need, that's what they want and that's what they try to go out and steal.''

GONE FOR A RIDE

The thieves tried twice for Daniel Ramirez's 2004 Dodge pickup, which gets about 10 miles per gallon with its four-door body and oversized off-road tires.

The damage done to the pickup's door in the first theft attempt had been repaired for about a month when he parked it in his driveway in his quiet Mission neighborhood one night in early September.

It was gone the next morning.

``I walked out and it wasn't there,'' said Ramirez, whose family operates Danny's Mexican Restaurant. ``They took it without a sound.''

Eight days later, the pickup resurfaced when Department of Public Safety troopers tried to make a routine traffic stop on it in Brooks County, said Mission Police Department spokesman Lt. Martin Garza. Troopers initiated a short pursuit until several occupants bailed out of the pickup and escaped into an overgrown area.

Inside the pickup, troopers found that the driver had tampered with its ignition and removed its backseat. Several backpacks and canned food were found, indicating it was used to transport illegal immigrants.

The pickup was returned to Ramirez, who submitted a claim to fix the damage done during the theft and the dents and scratches it got from the pursuit.

``It wasn't too bad,'' Ramirez said. ``I got a new paint job.''

TRUCK COUNTRY

Ramirez's story is not unusual: of the 17 vehicles stolen in Mission this month, 12 were pickups or SUVs, Garza said. Nearly all of them were stolen late at night in residential areas.

And at least two of those vehicles were caught on surveillance tape being driven across the Reynosa-Hidalgo International Bridge.

Criminal operations target pickups and SUVs to smuggle narcotics across the border in their cargo areas, Garcia said.

``The less trips they make, the better off they are of not being caught,'' Garcia said. ``Your trucks and your SUVs serve that purpose very well.''A vehicle's fuel-efficiency, color or interior options are luxuries thieves don't worry about, said Charles Caldwell, the interim director of the state's Automobile Burglary and Theft Prevention Authority.

Stolen vehicles are rarely kept past the time it takes them to commit a crime and dump the vehicle, sell it to an unsuspecting buyer or break it up for parts - usually in one tank of gas or less.

``It's an economic crisis for us. Not for them,'' Caldwell said. ``The trends that we have been seeing are pretty much the mainstay.''

NOT REALLY STOLEN

Gas prices are affecting one type of stolen vehicles: those insurance agents suspect really aren't.

With higher gas prices, more people are reporting their gas-guzzling vehicles as stolen after burning, flooding or otherwise disposing of them, said Frank Scafidi, a spokesman for the National Insurance Crime Bureau, which tracks stolen vehicles.

Owners who cannot afford to fix their vehicle, make its payments or pay for expensive fuel costs are likely to see such ``give-ups'' as a way to get rid of their problem by collecting on insurance.

An October NICB report showed that rising fuel prices correlated with an increasing number of owner give-ups. Not surprisingly, six of the top 10 vehicles most often listed as give-ups were pickups and SUVs.

Though give-ups have always been a problem for the insurance industry, he said, rising gas prices and the economic downturn are leading to more cases.

He said owner give-ups are even more prevalent near the borders where owners sell a vehicle for cheap out of the country and reap more profits when they report it as stolen in the United States.

``There's a lot of reasons why people (make the false claims),'' he said. ``But they do realize the financial benefit from the moment they lose that car.''

Jared Janes covers Hidalgo County government and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4424.