Published: April 17, 2007 10:10 pm      

It doesn't take long for someone to steal your car

You pull up to the store, you only have to pick up one thing and it’s a cold day so you leave your car running as you run in. But by the time you run back out, your car is not there. It’s stolen.

Detective Lt. Chuck Wheeler of the Woodward Police Department said this scenario happens more often than you might think.

“Leave your keys in,” he said, “and it just takes a few seconds for them to just jump in and take off.”

“It’s still the best practice to take your keys out of your vehicle and secure your vehicle,” he said.

Wheeler said the majority of stolen vehicle cases in Woodward involve offenders he called “opportunists.”

Opportunists are those people who see the vehicle that is still running or that still has the keys in it, he said, and see it as an opportunity to take a free ride.

He said often the opportunists do not take the car for any apparent reason other than because they can. He said they often just take the car for a joy ride and eventually abandon it somewhere.

However, sometimes they will take the car because they need to get from point A to point B, he said, and then they will just abandon the car whenever they get to where they are going.

Wheeler said fortunately there do not seem to be any cases of cars being stolen and taken to chop shops.

Unfortunately though there are cases when the cars have been stolen for other purposes than just joy rides, he said.

Sometimes the thieves will take the vehicles for the purpose of committing other crimes.

In these cases, Wheeler said the thieves are not simply opportunists, but rather they pick out certain types of vehicles, usually trucks, to take and they do not care if the keys are in the vehicle, but will break into the steering column if necessary.

He said the vehicles are often taken in order to commit other thefts, which is why trucks are taken because of their hauling capabilities.

But the thieves will take more than just trucks, Wheeler said. He said they will often take flatbed trailers which they will then use to transport other items they have stolen, which can be anything from oilfield equipment to ATVs.

These stolen trailers are also considered stolen vehicles according to the system used by the Woodward Police Department, Wheeler said.

He added that more trailers are stolen than other vehicles. He said these include a variety of different types of trailers from the small four feet by six feet trailers to the longer trailers used to transport oilfield piping.

Flatbed trailers often lack any type of identification, Wheeler said, since in Oklahoma they do not have to be tagged unless they are commercial trailers.

Thus he advises that if you do have a trailer, to put some sort of identification number on it somewhere that is not easily visible. He said this can help them identify the trailer and thus increases the chances of the trailer being returned to the true owners.

He said some trailers will have serial numbers, so he suggests that the owners keep a record of that number so it can be used for identification.

When a stolen vehicle is recovered, Wheeler said the police department will process it for fingerprints and evidence before it is returned to the owner.

He said if police can obtain a legible fingerprint that does not match anyone who had authorized access to the vehicle, such as the rightful owner or approved drivers if it is a company vehicle, then they will try to match it to any known suspects, meaning anyone already in the police system.

He said they will also try to use whatever other evidence they are able to collect to try to identify the perpetrator.

However, Wheeler said the thieves do not usually leave a lot of evidence behind, so in many cases they are not able to determine who stole the vehicle.

But, he said, there is one thing that can really help the police to identify vehicle thieves: a witness.

He said sometimes a citizen’s report about suspicious activity is the only lead that the police will have.

“That’s why we ask our citizens if they see anything suspicious . . . to call us,” he said.

Suspicious activity can include things like people snooping around cars early in the morning or late at night, he said.

Wheeler said he is hoping that the public may be able to help them in solving a recent case in which an offender used a stolen truck and trailer to steal ATV equipment from the Kawasaki dealership south of town.

He is asking that anyone who may have seen the truck and trailer to contact the police department. He said it would have been a white or gold one-ton dually Ford truck with an approximately 40 foot long gooseneck truck loaded with several ATVs.

He said the ATVs were stolen either late Saturday night or sometime Sunday. So if you saw anything matching that description around those times, Wheeler said it is important that you notify the police as soon as possible.

He said some other vehicles may have been involved in this string of burglaries, so the police would really appreciate any information that may help them to solve this case.

Wheeler said the amount of all types of crime, not only vehicle theft, is increasing in Woodward, which he attributed to an unfortunate consequence of population growth.

However, he said he thinks Woodward’s crime rate is still below other communities of the same size.

“I think it’s still a good community,” he said.