Substantial Rise in Catalytic Converter Thefts | Hacker News Reader

Substantial Rise in Catalytic Converter Thefts

bbc.co.uk

53 pointsKaibeezy49 comments

It always surprises me that journalists covering property crime don’t expound on the reasons for the crime happening in the first place. Catalytic converters, copper pipes, brass fire fighting fittings - these are stolen to fund the purchase of drugs.

Why isn’t there more discussion of legalization so that addicts won’t have to steal and cause so much collateral damage to the economy?

Why would legalization make addicts not have to steal? Why can't they work (legal) jobs and use that money to buy the (illegal) drugs? Unless the answer is that legalizing the drugs will keep them from being fired for illegal drug use while still being able to work their jobs I don't see a connection between the drugs being legal or not and the method of obtaining the money used to purchase the drugs.

Making drugs is cheap. Making alcohol is cheap. Recreational drugs are expensive at the retail level due to the black market price premium. That's why there is the stereotype of the thieving junkie rather than the thieving alcoholic. Both are addicted but only one of them pays black market prices.

For $15 a day a person can spend every hour of it inebriated. $15 a day is barely a down payment on a black market opioid dependency.

An example I often give to make people understand how ludicrous the war on drugs has become:

I can drive a moving van up to the back of the government liquor store and fill the van to the brim with hard liquor. Nobody will bat an eyelid as I drive away with enough alcohol to kill 1,000 people.

By contrast, if I drive the same moving van up to the back of a warehouse and attempt to transport 1,000 potentially lethal hits of fentanyl, I could face 25 years in prison.

As the delivery man, how much would you want to be paid in each case? I’m betting the premium for delivering against a risk of life in prison is probably a touch higher.

Interestingly, in the US, legal cannabis prices are usually more than double those on the black market because they’re taxed extremely heavily.

Granted, users of cannabis aren’t* usually as captive as those on opioids, but the issue remains that legality may not provide the price change desired.

* Edit: corrected typo on mobile.

>users of cannabis are usually as captive as those on opioids

Gonna need a source for that one, chief.

I can sleep off a weed craving, that’s telling your mind no more slight dopamine boost. Can’t really ignore your body the same way when it’s going through opioid withdrawals because all of your chemicals are out of whack.

That was a typo, thanks for the catch! That’s exactly the point I was trying to make.

I think giving money to people that need it and forcing them to test for illegal drugs is a better solution. There is nothing good or even acceptable about addiction, it's just criminalizing it is a very bad idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_testing_welfare_recipient...

I had my cat stolen a few years back in Hammersmith, London.

Made the car a writeoff as it was a cheap one anyway. I got in, turned the key, car sounded like a 2-stroke bike, turns out the exhaust had a wee "hole" in it.

I miss that car. I wouldn't want it back, but it was nice. Mint 2002 Honda Accord. Oh well.

The older the car, often the bigger the engine and cat. On some of those old pickups, the cat is worth more than the carcass.

My friend just had thier cat ripped out of thier Prius in Oakland. It took the thief team all of 7 minutes to accomplish it according to our camera records.

California has seen an insane uptick in converter thefts from Priuses.

Doesn't help that prop 47 in California makes thefts under $1,000 a misdemeanor, so if you get caught stealing them you just get a slap on the wrist.

Can't they charge them with some federal crime since they are altering an emissions system?

Something needs to be done about scrap metal buyers and the people who sell to them to weed out the thieves. They will steal anything made from certain metals and the recyclers will happily buy anything including a pickup truck full of brand new air conditioning units.

Doesn't help that prop 47 in California makes thefts under $1,000 a misdemeanor, so if you get caught stealing them you just get a slap on the wrist.

Oh please. This old chestnut? If the police won't enforce misdemeanors that's on them, not Prop 47. Misdemeanors can see sentences of up to just under a year which should provide you plenty of time to punish a thief. Do we really need life sentences for stealing catalytic converters?

Meanwhile NAPA lists one cat for a 2013 Prius at about $1000 and the other one at about $500. And those are the cheapie ones that aren't legal to install in California/NY. A pair of legit cats that're CARB certified (likely only available through Toyota proper) is going to be even further into felony territory. To be clear, you may be able to get a legit set installed for less than $1,000 (and you could have your friend's uncle install a used one on the sly for cheap I'm sure), but I wouldn't consider that typical and I doubt the court would bat an eye at charging your typical catcon theft as a felony.

IOW Prop. 47 is not behind the uptick in crime.

This is not an "old chestnut" it's true.

Ever since prop 47, certain crimes like shoplifting and porch piracy have increased by 10x (an order of magnitude).

You will not spend any time in jail for these crimes

In fairness to the people of California, they got hosed by a lot of "tough on crime" laws in the past. When they made these 3 strikes laws and then you had murderers and rapists being released to make room for non violent felony offenders convicted after 3 strikes.

So I imagine people in California are a whole lot more careful with rhetoric like that these days. No, they probably aren't gonna let you make what are obviously less serious crimes into crimes that have equivalent terms to inmates convicted of, say, 2nd degree murder or manslaughter. (The way these tough on crime laws tend to work, sometimes the nonviolent criminals get longer terms than the violent criminals.) If you want support in getting tough on crime, than get tough on the high end, life ending type crimes. Don't try to convince people to fill their prisons with bicycle and muffler thieves. Prisons are expensive, there should be a good cost benefit ratio for every inmate you incarcerate.

If you absolutely believe you have to do something tough to muffler thieves, then hey, they seem extremely good candidates for ankle bracelets. (Which you can do right now charging them with misdemeanors. No need to change any laws.) But years in prison at 30 Grand a pop, (probably more in some states), should be completely out of the question. It's not worth that much.

Could it be that prop 47 passed right around the time IoT became mainstream & DIY surveillance systems became affordable? Perhaps those crimes are just reported more frequently now because people are likely to have solid evidence to provide police.

I never would have reported a stolen package to police before I had a camera system.

  & DIY surveillance systems became affordable?

You're claiming that the presence of cheap surveillance systems increase the occurrence of theft?

City governments in SV don't seek to have property crime prosecuted here because they view it as economic stimulus.

> You're claiming that the presence of cheap surveillance systems increase the occurrence of theft?

No, that’s not at all what I’m saying. I’m suggesting cheap surveillance systems might increase the reporting of theft to law enforcement.

Increased reports of a crime does not necessarily mean that crime has is being perpetrated more frequently.

Please don’t back up unsubstantiated claims with “it’s true”. Please read HN commenting rules. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html This type of conversation is an uninteresting back and forth of opinion unless you provide sources.

https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/06/12/proposition-47-cr...

https://www.ppic.org/press-release/proposition-47-linked-to-...

http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=9417

https://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-prop47-anniversary...

The ballot measure led to the lowest arrest rate in state history in 2015 as experts said police frequently ignored crimes that brought minimal punishment.

IOW, the police aren't doing their jobs. That's not the fault of Prop 47.

Police don't pursue by departmental policy set well up the chain of command.

I backed it up with 4 sources, and I get criticized. Meanwhile, someone who calls the fact that Prop 47 leads to more crime gets honored and venerated here.

If you want to be pro-crime, fine. That's your right. But don't lie about it.

I backed it up with 4 sources, and I get criticized.

You left out the part where your own sources contradict your claims.

Since it is usually way, way more than $1,000 to replace a catalytic converter I think your point is completely off-topic.

I don’t think this is a good idea. Criminals aren’t deterred by the punishment terms, and upgrading minor thefts to serious crime levels is contributing to the mass incarceration problem across the US.

Building a society without incentives to steal and focusing on reform and rehabilitation is what we should be aiming for .

> Criminals aren’t deterred by the punishment terms, and upgrading minor thefts to serious crime levels is contributing to the mass incarceration problem across the US.

I think the problem with mass incarceration is more one of mental illness and punishing the associated problems [0] than punishing intelligent-but-lazy people who’d rather wreck people’s rides by stealing catalytic converters than apply themselves productively.

[0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/numbers-mental-illness-b...

Going after rings of catalytic converters thieves is appropriate, if you look for the smart people at the top (head gangster providing direction, etc).

I agree with your last paragraph. Several of my passengers were not well served by their punitive punishments - they had more problems (PTSD, etc) after prison than before.

>Place a protective covering over the catalytic converter

sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, given that a catalytic converter is (necessarily) one of the hottest components on a car.

They make security devices which is essentially a collar on each side with steel cables between. Makes it virtually impossible to cut it off. It instead requires you to first take off the device then cut off the cat. This problem of cat thefts have been a problem in the us for a long time.

I have a friend in London who was hit with this 3 times in the past few years. He has a security camera overlooking the car but no garage option. First time they stole the unprotected cat it took under 4 minutes. Second time he had the steel cable mesh with collars and clamps protecting it and they stole it in under 7 minutes. Third time he had some sort of fancy protective system with alarm, steel cables, kevlar straps, clearly labeled so the thieves would know. They recognized this to be not worth the trouble so they vandalized the cat instead. The value of the vandalized cat was basically enough to break even with the cost of the fancy protection.

> This problem of cat thefts have been a problem in the us for a long time.

Indeed. I don't know what materials the current generations use, but 20 years ago, at least, the catalytic mesh was platinum.

Unsurprisingly, converter thefts were common enough. (This was back in Finland, fwiw.)

Usually it’s platinum, palladium, and rhodium along with some other, cheaper metals.

There's already a heat shield covering it on many cars.

Muffler and catalytic converter thefts were one of the reasons the New York City Fleet purchased more EVs:

https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dcas/downloads/pdf/fleet/NYC-Fle...

> Since hybrid cars have two power sources - electric and petrol or diesel - the catalytic converter is used less frequently to process pollutants. The metals are less likely to corrode, meaning they are worth more and thus attractive to thieves.

Is this true? I thought hybrids needed more surface area in the cat because they don’t get hot easily because of the engine running less (frequently).

I understand the solution to this is to buy a car with a really small engine and park it next to cars with really big engines or hybrids. They have much more valuable catalytic converters so are likely to get nicked before yours is.

Also if you're in UK and have fully comp cover it should cover replacement cost minus excess if it's in the described location in the policy over night.

Had mine stolen off a Toyota Sequoia. Done in the driveway, alarm on, bedroom windows open.

It was so clean, not even dust on the ground. Looked like it had been beamed away.

They hit the whole area in a couple of nights. Four wheel drive vehicles were popular because of easy access.

To get them replaced was a bit over 5k. My understanding is the thives get about 50 a piece.

They werent quiet, you were just sleeping. A hand jig will take one out in 30 seconds or less tho. Good luck waking up to that noise esp if any car is driving down your road

With rhodium at £4000/oz and lax enforcement of the Air Weapons Licensing Act 2015, this was the inevitable result.

> This is due to the lack of enforcement of the Scrap Metals Dealers Act 2013 and its complementary legislation in Scotland, The Air Weapons Licensing Act 2015.

Why is scrap metal recycling controlled under a law that is called “Air Weapons Licensing”?

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2015/10/contents/enacted

Okay, so technically it is “and licensing” and the article has a typo, but still why did they put these things together like this?

> why did they put these things together like this?

At a glance, it looks to be an act that defines regulations for all matters requiring licensing (weapons, alcohol, taxis, etc.) that are controlled by the devolved administration - I don't see any reason why that wouldn't be in one bill?

I agree it makes sense. I think the reason for the strange title is because, technically, air weapons are not licensed.

It takes considerable time and effort to get an Act successfully through Parliament, so it's often best to group related things together in a single piece of legislation rather than small separate ones.

This particular legislation is all about permits and licensing for various things, whether that be air weapons or scrap metal dealing, so I'd say it's legitimate to group them together.

I'm guessing crazy lobbying shenanigans like in the US

Chicago, IL, USA here. Facebook marketplace is full of catalytic converters right now. Right on the front page.

I have several friends who have had their cats stolen in Oakland in the last year. Hondas and Toyotas mostly. One friend had his cat stolen from his Prius three times in one year. He's sold the Prius now.

Friend of mine has a Prius and lives in Echo Park in LA. His cat was cut out of his car twice in two weeks. Seemed like every person in the chain benefited from the theft, scrap metal guys, tow truck towing his car to mechanic, mechanic replacing it and also trying to sell him on a cage.

It was almost like the theives were alerted by the mechanic that he had replaced the cat.

Theives only make a couple hundred from the cat, insurance pays the mechanic a couple g’s for a new one plus labor.

Should add that his insurance company covered everything both times and provided rental car but after second time they won’t cover the vehicle anymore being parked in that neighborhood on the street.

Poor cat

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