The number of cars being stolen in New Jersey is on a sharp decline because of anti-theft devices that make it all but impossible to steal a new car without an electronically linked key. That has made keys and electronic fobs increasingly the focus of car thieves these days.
NEWARK--Jihad Brown was charged with four carjackings that went down in four days.
There was the grey Audi A6 taken at gunpoint in Newark. The victim told police Brown cut him off in another car, pointed a Smith and Wesson .357 magnum at him, and demanded, "Get out of the car, Pops!"
The next day, according to the FBI, it was a grey Infinity G35 luxury sedan taken from a woman in Newark as she was loading her infant in a car seat, with two other young children already inside. Brown held the black handgun to her head and yelled, "Everyone get the [expletive] out of the car!"
The day after that, the target was a black Infinity FX-35 SUV taken at gunpoint as its owner--preparing to drive to a funeral in Canada--backed out of his driveway, also in Newark.
And on the final day of the May 2011 crime spree, the victims were two nursing students--one with her two-year old daughter in the car--who had stopped for a red light in their Mercedes C-300 when they were suddenly cut off by an FX-35 without license plates. Brown jumped onto the hood of the Mercedes and pointed a revolver at one of the women through the open sunroof.
Jihad Brown (Essex County Correctional Facility)But Brown, 30, finally sentenced in June to nearly 20 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to three of the four carjackings, appears to have less company on the streets these days.
In the past two years, state and federal law enforcement authorities have broken up three major international car theft rings that used carjacking as a tool in trade.
The number of cars being stolen in New Jersey, meanwhile, has been on a sharp decline because of anti-theft devices that make it all but impossible to steal a new car without an electronically linked key--making keys and electronic fobs increasingly the primary focus of car thieves these days.
"It's harder to steal a car," said Anthony Ambrose, Newark's former police director and now chief of detectives for the Essex County Prosecutor's Office. "Cars you once could start with a screwdriver you can't take anymore."
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The number of cars stolen in New Jersey dropped from 13,709 in 2013 to 11,702 last year, according to State Police data. In Newark, which still remains the stolen car capital of New Jersey, motor vehicle theft through the first nine months of 2015 through September dropped by more than 16 percent over the same period last year, to 1,511 stolen cars and trucks.
The black market commerce that once drove car theft has dried up as well, Ambrose said. So-called "chop shops" where car thieves once took hot wheels to be stripped for parts are harder to find, he noted. Taking the vehicle identification numbers of wrecked cars and "retagging" stolen vehicles with those numbers to change its identity still occurs, he said, but not as often anymore.
Instead, the big pipeline for new stolen cars has become West Africa, say law enforcement authorities. That was where most of the vehicles stolen by a ring broken up last month by the New Jersey State Police and Division of Criminal Justice were being smuggled.
"Clearly when you see Range Rovers being taken, it's pretty clear where those cars are going," said Wayne Fisher, a professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University and former deputy director of the Division of Criminal Justice.
The key is the key...
With the anti-theft technology now built into new cars, the easiest set of wheels to take is now apparently an old one. The car most often stolen in New Jersey last year was a well-traveled Honda Accord from the 1990s that lost its new car smell decades ago. Popular when new and with many still on the road, it has no electronic gizmos to keep it out of the hands of thieves, who continue to steal it.
According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau--a trade group formed by the insurance industry that focuses on insurance-related crime--more than 63 percent of all cars reported stolen nationwide last year were more than 15 years old, manufactured before the advent of electronic keys and keyless fobs that not only unlocks the door, but the engine as well.
More often than not, the NICB said the theft of a new car now is the result of someone leaving the keys in the vehicle, or leaving it running unattended.
"If people leave their keys in the car or otherwise make it easy for thieves, then all bets are off. You can't fix stupid," remarked spokesman Frank Scafidi.
And there seems to be a lot of stupid out there. The NICB said nearly 7 percent of all vehicles reported stolen in 2014 had keys in them--44,828 cars and trucks. That was up from 5.4 percent of all motor vehicle thefts in 2012. California led the list with 19,597. New Jersey was No. 8 among the top 10 states, with 4,140 vehicles taken with the key inside.
Elie Honig, director of the state Division of Criminal Justice, said with a screwdriver no longer the tool of trade for hot-wiring an ignition switch in late-model vehicles, that nature of car theft has been changing in response to technology.
"It has led to more 'soft steals,'" he said, aimed at getting the car--and the key--without a confrontation on the street.
Car washes, for example, offer an opportunity when a vehicle comes out for its final wipe-down and left unguarded for a few moments with its key or fob inside. People who leave their cars running outside a convenience store for a cub of coffee may not see it in the parking lot when they get back.
"People who want to steal cars are evolving in their methodology," Honig said. "They have gotten better at stealing a car when it's running."
The carjacking threat
Carjacking incidents, while relatively small in numbers statewide, had been climbing with the introduction of keyless entry systems, but recently have been on the wane as well.
In Essex, where most of the carjackings in New Jersey are reported, the number of carjackings and attemped carjackings went from 478 in 2013 to 234 in 2014. This year to date, the number is at 200, according to the Essex County Prosecutor's office. The bulk of those crimes occurred in Newark. Carjacking and carjacking attempts in the state's largest city dropped from 376 in 2013 to 209 last year, according to the Essex County Prosecutor's Office. This year to date, there have been 156 attempted and reported carjackings in Newark, said Ambrose.
"They are robbing valets as well," he said, noting that the target now begins with the key. "Now they rob four to five cars from a valet at a time."
That was one of the strategies used by some of the sophisticated car theft rings shut down by the state and FBI.
In October, the state Attorney General's office broke up an international carjacking and stolen car trafficking ring that took luxury cars, often by force from suburbs along the Route 17 corridor in New Jersey and other suburban communities.
In one afternoon incident in September 2014, a man told police he was sitting in his black Mercedes S550 in the parking lot at Jersey Gardens shopping mall in Elizabeth when a black car pulled up behind his vehicle. He was confronted by a masked man with a black handgun and ordered to get out of the car. The assailant got in and drove off, taking the victim's car keys, iPhone, iPad, wallet and numerous credit cards.
Two weeks later, a similar carjacking occurred at The Outlet Collection Mall in Elizabeth when an armed gunman took a victim's black Mercedes S550, ordering him to keep on walking or he would be shot.
Cars were also stolen from gas stations, convenience stores, carwashes, airports and car dealerships. Officials said the group searched wealthy neighborhoods looking for high-end cars unlocked with the key fob in the glove box.
All the cars were destined for shipment overseas. Approximately 90 stolen vehicles worth more than $4 million taken by the ring were later recovered.
In 2014, a separate investigation led to the arrest of 29 men following a 10-month investigation of a ring that targeted high-end vehicles--including luxury SUVs and cars made by Land Rover, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Honda, Porsche, Jaguar and Aston Martin--that were being shipped overseas. Approximately 140 of the cars were recovered at ports in New Jersey and New York. Twenty-seven of the recovered vehicles had been taken in carjackings, while the others were stolen after thieves obtained electronic keys or key fobs.
And in a separate federal case brought by the U.S. Attorney's office, Hope K. Kantete, 44, of Brooklyn, was sentenced last year to nearly 22 years in prison for her role in another ring responsible for shipping dozens of stolen and carjacked luxury cars and sports utility vehicles valued at more than $2.5 million from New Jersey to Africa.
Despite the high profile cases, Honig does not expect to see the problem go away, with the continued demand for stolen high-end vehicles in West Africa, where major auto retailers refuse to sell cars, far from satiated.
"They can be sold for multiple times their sticker values there," he said.
Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL. Find NJ.com on Facebook.