There were 32,875 vehicle thefts in the state last year, according to data from the Colorado Stolen Vehicle Database Repository. That's a decrease of almost 10,000 from 2022, when thefts totaled 41,520. And nearly all of the stolen vehicles were recovered in 2023; law enforcement agencies located 30,187 of them.
Last year was "actually a three-year low,” says Cale Gould, statewide public outreach coordinator for the Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority (CATPA), a grants unit within the Colorado State Patrol that funds auto theft prevention efforts in the state.
According to Gould, the state had been logging record-high numbers of car thefts over the past few years, nearly doubling from the 20,946 stolen in 2018. But now the totals are dropping, and Gould credits two pieces of legislation for aiding in the change.
The Motor Vehicle Theft and Unauthorized Use law, which went into effect in July 2022, turned all car theft charges into felonies — some had previously been misdemeanors — and escalated charging and sentencing for people who've been found guilty of stealing a car more than once. It also added penalties for secondary crimes, when people steal cars to commit other offenses — like the notorious crime ring that got busted in October for stealing cars from Denver International Airport and then using them in burglaries and robberies.
Lawmakers also approved the Auto Theft Prevention Cash Fund, which gave $5 million from the general fund budget to CATPA to increase its programming. While Gould says both of those laws helped decrease auto theft in the second half of the year, the high rate of car theft in 2021 and 2022 had already made the crime top of mind for lawmakers and law enforcement alike, as well as drivers themselves.
“Local law enforcement were able to start to reprioritize auto theft as a crime and work on protecting their citizens against auto theft,” Gould says. “And public awareness went sky high. … With that came a lot of folks looking to do extra protection with their car or take more steps to secure their car.”
Denver certainly took notice, with the Denver Police Department unveiling a new DenverTrack program last March that enables those who live or work in Denver and have vehicles with installed GPS or Bluetooth tracking devices to register with the DPD so that the police can quickly access location information if the vehicle is stolen.
Police Chief Ron Thomas and Mayor Mike Johnston announced a joint car theft prevention plan on January 25.
Catie Cheshire
In November and December, only 21 vehicles were stolen from the airport; in November 2022 alone, there were a whopping 39 vehicles stolen. To reduce thefts, the airport installed additional HALO cameras, increased security officer presence in its lots, and put up new barriers to prevent runaway criminals.
It also tested out ALPR technology that reads license plates and flags when plates associated with stolen vehicles or other crimes enter airport property. Johnston's auto theft prevention plan will add that technology to approximately 70 intersections across Denver, for a total of 111 license plate readers in the city.
“If you steal a car anywhere in the city, we will have a chance to track you as soon as you have left that location, to know the direction in which you fled and be able to help inform police pursuit of those individuals at that time,” Johnston explained while announcing the plan.
The DPD general fund will pay for 93 of the cameras; the rest will be covered by funding already secured by Denver city councilmembers Paul Kashmann and Amanda Sawyer. The license plate readers will debut in a one-year pilot to ensure the technology is effective.
At the announcement, Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas assured residents that no personal identifiable information will be collected — just license plate readings. The city will not share data with ICE, and data will be automatically deleted after thirty days unless it is flagged as being needed as evidence.
“We are going to be setting up a transparency portal where you can see information,” Thomas says. ”You'll be able to see exactly where all of our cameras are located. You'll be able to see all of the license plates that were tracked and those that were identified as being wanted.”
The city currently has ALPR systems at the Federal Boulevard and Sixth Avenue intersection and the Colfax Avenue and Sheridan Boulevard intersection. Those two cameras alone have captured information on 4,164 stolen vehicles and 29,194 vehicles associated with a wanted party.
“The locations were identified through an overlay of violent crime and auto theft, as well as hit-and-runs,” Thomas said. “We want people to know that they exist. We want people to know that if you steal a car, you're going to be quickly tracked and identified and captured.”
Installation of the new cameras will start in the “very near future," he said, adding that the annual cost for investigating stolen cars is currently $600,000, so this technology could lead to a significant cost reduction if it is successful at deterring crime while also making vehicle recovery easier.
Johnston’s plan will also make permanent the Denver Auto Theft Team (DATT), which is fully focused on tracking and arresting auto thieves; it began as a pilot last March. Since then, it has made 201 arrests of car thieves, as well as 45 additional felony arrests; it also recovered thirty illegal guns.
Statewide, the cars most at-risk of being stolen are the Hyundai Elantra, Chevrolet Silverado, Hyundai Sonata and Ford F-150. Each of those models was snatched over 1,000 times in 2023. In Denver, the most wanted models were similar, with Kia Sportage joining the lineup to round out the city’s top five. With that in mind, Denver will partner with Kia and Hyundai to host events where city residents can get software updates to guard against a hack that makes those vehicles easy to steal.
And finally, the city is focused on bringing the police force up to full capacity, with 167 cadets projected to graduate this year. A shortage of officers had resulted in fewer cops patrolling the streets, which contributed to car theft, Johnston said.
“Our goal is this should be a clear message that if you steal a car in this city, you will be caught and then you will be prosecuted,” the mayor added. “That means you want to decide either not to do it or to do it someplace else.”
Statewide, CATPA has other initiatives that will continue through the year to further reduce auto theft. It operates on a July-to-July cycle, so the strategies that worked at the end of 2023 are still in place.
One of those is a steering wheel lock program through which people with high-risk vehicles can get free security devices. In metro Denver, those devices are available from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays at the Colorado State Patrol Records Department at 700 Kipling Street in Lakewood.
Another is the new Victims Assistance Fund, which was made possible by the extra funds from the legislature in 2023. “We provide the resources for anything from temporary transportation to vehicle repair, vehicle towing and recovery,” Gould says. “The legislature made clear...they gave us the statutory ability to be able to fund victims’ initiatives, and we're thrilled to be able to give back to the community that way.”
While thefts are dropping, officials caution that they still occur. So drivers should continue to employ strategies like rolling up all windows, locking the car, never leaving a running car unattended, parking in well-lit, busy areas, and removing all belongings from inside the car when it is parked.
“We're not in the clear,” Gould says. ”However, it is a big, significant step this last year.”
