Portland was on track this spring to see more than 10,000 car thefts by the end of 2023, making the city one of the most vulnerable in the U.S. to this particular crime, but in 23 recent missions police have recovered 197 stolen vehicles.
On Thursday, Portland Police Bureau officials cited this figure as they again touted results from their recently launched stolen-car operation, which uses a data-driven approach to identify and locate stolen cars.
The approach, designed with assistance from cancer researchers at OHSU, involves supplying officers on stolen-car missions with a list of common characteristics of stolen cars, based on data collected from prior missions.
The dataset is meant to reduce the amount of guesswork that goes into determining whether to stop a car, while increasing the number of stops that result in recovering a stolen car, making an arrest or serving a warrant. Bureau officials said they believed better results in stolen-car cases will prevent other crime, since car theft can be a precursor to more violent or dangerous criminal behavior, police said.
The bureau’s Stolen Vehicle Operations follows the mantra of “fewer stops, better outcomes.”
Before using a data-informed approach on mission, officers would find a stolen car in one out of 31 stops, police said. On average, they arrested someone in one out of six stops and the chances of finding a gun were one in 144.
In April, officers said one out of every six stopped cars was stolen. And someone was arrested in one out of three cars police pulled over.
As of June, in 23 missions, one out of every five stopped cars was stolen, police said. An arrest was made in one out of every three stops, and officers have recovered a gun in one out of every 22 stops.
That translates to 197 recovered vehicles, 292 arrests and 43 guns, police said.
Officer Michael Terrett, who helps oversee the operation, said each mission is conducted by a team of around 20 patrol officers in the East Precinct, with assistance from the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office and police planes. The patrol officers volunteer to work overtime for the missions, and each one has been trained on how to use the dataset.
“We make sure that everybody on these stolen vehicle operations is working off the same information, as opposed to an officer who has a lot of experience and time versus a newer officer,” Terrett said. “We can ideally bridge that gap just by showing them the information.”
Lt. Norman Staples, who also helps oversee the operation, said he hopes the data-informed approach to stolen-car cases will be adopted by the entire bureau, not just the East Precinct where the operation is currently focused. He also hopes to share the approach with police academies and neighboring agencies.
“We’re getting to the point now where we want to see if we can replicate this in other areas,” Staples said. “This is just not an East Portland phenomenon. Can we take this to Vancouver? Can we take this to Salem? Can we take it to other agencies and they see the same results?”
Staples also said the team is seeking $1 million in future city funding.
“We want to be stopping the people involved in illegal activity, and if we can leave the community members not involved in any illegal activity alone, that’s our goal,” Staples said.
In 2021, Portland ranked fifth in the country for car thefts per capita. Nearly 4,000 cars have been reported stolen from January to May of this year, which is almost on pace with last year’s 11,000 car thefts, according to police data.
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— Nick Gibson; [email protected]; 971-393-8259; @newsynicholas
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