AUSTIN, Texas — It's an issue most people are becoming familiar with nationwide. Local law enforcement have been seeing an increase of catalytic converter theft cases.
In the summer of 2021, the Austin Police Department had reported nearly 900 cases for the year. While, in 2019, there were only 27 thefts for the entire year. Nationwide, the crime skyrocketed 326% from 2019 to 2020. Austin resident Braxton Johnson-Ray was a victim of this.
"I thought it might have been a muffler issue. I called a muffler repair shop and described it and they said, 'Check under the car, I think your catalytic converter had been stolen." When I checked under the car, sure enough, the catalytic converter had been stolen," said Johnson-Ray.
According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, the theft of catalytic converters increased due to the increasing value of the precious metals – specifically rhodium, palladium and platinum, otherwise known as “platinum group metals” or PGMs. While any engine-powered vehicle running on gas or diesel can be targeted for these kind of thefts, typically larger, high-clearance vehicles tend to be targeted for the ease of getting underneath the vehicle and removing the catalytic converter in a matter of seconds. However, hybrid vehicles also tend to be targeted often as their hybrid system design tends to result in cleaner catalytic converters.
A search on KITCO.com showed a high for rhodium at $27,000/oz from March 19-22, 2021. On April 12, 2022, rhodium was at $18,400 per ounce. Palladium reached $2,890 per ounce on May 6, 2021. Now, palladium is about $2,357 per ounce. And lastly, platinum reached a high of $1,266 on Feb. 19, 2021, but was at about $977 per ounce in recently.
Typically, thieves will often receive $50-$250 per catalytic converter when they sell converters to recycling facilities. While the values of these metals are lower than their peaks in 2021, they are still higher than the value when thefts started increasing in 2019.
In March of 2021, APD said the the five most commonly targeted vehicles were: Toyota Prius (263 thefts), Honda Element (60 thefts), Ford Econoline (37 thefts), Chevrolet Express (24 thefts) and Toyota Tundra (17 thefts).
Chad Carter, a property crimes detective with the Travis County Sheriff's Office, said there are ways to protect your vehicle.
"One of the main things is to be strategic on where you park your car. If you can park it inside your garage or you can park it in a fenced-in area, gated community, anything like that, to where that slows the person down and deters them from stealing converter," said Carter.
As for Johnson-Ray, since the incident they said they've parked their car in well-lit areas because thieves can be ruthless.
"I could have been someone who had a sick kid who needed to go pick up medicine. The thieves didn't care, they didn't know who I was, it didn't matter to them, they just wanted to make a quick buck," said Johnson-Ray.
In June of 2021, Gov. Greg Abbott signed House Bill 4110 into effect that makes it a felony to steal, buy or sell stolen catalytic converters.
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