Amarillo’s Stolen Car Problem: Coming To An End?

It seems to be a long ranging problem for the city of Amarillo...stolen cars.

Over the last few years, we've seen more car break-in's and thefts than a lot of places, but it may start coming to an end.

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Well, maybe not an end but definitely a slow down. The Amarillo Police Department is now on the case.

Back in 2020, AAA did a study on stolen cars. What it found was that Amarillo ranked number THREE on the list. Not a good place to be. Lubbock and Odessa were the only cities ahead of us in this study.

To put it in perspective, back in 2020 Amarillo saw a car theft rate of a touch over 365 cars stolen per 100,000 people. That shakes out to 1 car per 274 people. Many of those incidents were found to come from key fobs being left in cars or doors remaining unlocked.

The Amarillo Police Department has had enough of it. On Friday, August 27 APD put out a little bait, and someone grabbed the line.

Within 14 hours, the car had been stolen and police were on the case. Literally minutes later, they located the bait car at the Rama Motel and apprehended two suspects.

The question is this. Will putting out the bait car be enough to start deterring these thieves from snagging cars that don't belong to them? Or are they still willing to take their chances and see if they can get away with a new to them ride?

Either way, it's good to see APD doing something about putting it to an end. Nothing is worse than waking up and finding your car is missing. In the meantime, continue to remove car fobs and keys from your car and make sure it's locked up. Take all valuables out of the car for extra measure. I do it all the time, so if it ends up missing or someone breaks in, they don't get away with anything important.

Good job APD!