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The numbers have been going down for years. Auto manufacturers make vehicles harder to steal and police ramp up their efforts to catch the crooks. As a result, the numbers take a dive. Take a look at Lawrence. The one-time stolen car capital of the world, in 1998, 1,979 vehicles were reported stolen. The numbers dropped every year since then to a low of 341 vehicles in 2008. As of Nov. 22, this year’s number is slightly up at 379 — the first increase in more than a decade.

Police via the Auto Theft Task Force are ramping up their efforts to crack down on thefts. Part of this effort has included going after cars with stolen parts. According to Lawrence Police detective Carl Farrington (featured in the video above), it’s pretty common for theives to steal Honda Civics or other high-theft vehicles and then strip them down for parts. Cars confiscated by police may not be stolen vehicles, but may have stolen parts on them stripped from other cars. Many of these key parts have hight-theft ID labels on them, which are illegal to remove. When police find parts without these labels, they’re able to build a case against the car owner. Junk yards that sell parts are required to keep those tags on, too (follow the video above to YouTube to see a string of comments about that).

Although cars are getting increasingly more difficult to steal (I don’t speak from experience), thieves continue to find a way.

In May 2008, I wrote a piece on car thefts in the city of Worcester. Although most new cars now come with computer chips built into the keys that communicate with the car where there’s a will, there’s a way. From the story:

… car thieves often use an altered Honda or Acura key to gain access to the vehicles, which are particularly susceptible to such methods. In some cases, a thief with a car’s vehicle identification number can also get a key from a dealership — claiming to be the car’s owner and having lost the key.