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Comment by xrd | Hacker News Reader

But then you read this and it's a completely different story. Why the huge discrepancies in reporting?

https://www.nicb.org/news/news-releases/nicb-report-finds-ve...

What in the hell is going on in the mountain west? ABQ, Pueblo, Denver, Billings? What makes this region so prime for car thefts?

I had a truck and a motorcycle stolen in a small town in Wyoming. Another 11 vehicles were stolen in 1 week in the same town. Some were caught on tape.

Police told me the thieves were likely a group from Mexico with a way to get either whole vehicles, or parts, across the border. And that they were moving through the region. Spend a few days in a town, pick all the low hanging fruit, get it back across the border, and never have to go back to that town again.

I can't say what's true, but that's what the police said. To me, it seems like it'd be very difficult to get whole vehicles across the border, but if you could, the rest of that strategy would play out great. Spend a week or two casing some sleepy town for targets, steal them all in a few days, and get the hell away and never come back.

Let's take for granted that the passing it to Mexico bit is significant in the numbers of stolen cars near the Mexico border.

That makes what's happening in Washington DC or Oregon positively disturbing, as they'd have an issue at a bigger scale than states where it's basically international organized crime that orchestrates the thefts...

I suspect the commonality (barring DC) is that these areas have cheap real estate where you can drive the car quickly to the garage and break it down before anyone even knows it's missing.

I really don't understand why DC, though. Is there a coordination problem with surrounding states if a car is reported stolen that makes stealing cars easy (DC is not a state, per se, as it is more of a federal protectorate-thingy)?

Might be no chase policy -> use it to do some crime -> ditch

I'm not saying that's not the case, but if it were, why isn't Tucson, Las Cruces, and El Paso higher on the list? They are much closer.

Maybe it's a don't s--- where you eat thing?

My best guess (and again I want to reiterate that this is all hearsay told to me by the police) is that those communities are more aware of these types of activities, and therefore the fruit is not quite as low-hanging as a sleepy Wyoming town.

Based on news out of Albuquerque, organized crime groups that were previously operating in So Cal (San Bernardo and Riverside previously had the highest rates) figured out they could get their mission accomplished more easily in New Mexico and Colorado.

the country is sparse enough that you can actually get some use out of the car, instead of getting picked up immediately by cameras or patrol.

being an outlaw is still a real, accessible way of life in remote parts of the country. there is an entire culture of people out there doing it, and they're mostly offline and invisible to the state.

Higher levels of background radiation in Denver turns people into supervillains. (And the rampant NIMBYism makes them poorer.)

Different numbers. One is cars stolen/population. The other is cars stolen/registered cars.

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