Teens feared to be behind increase in carjackings, thefts
His prized sedan idled in park on Livingston Avenue on a late December day while Younes Ayed briefly popped inside the East Side furniture warehouse where he works.
A minute – maybe two – ticked by before he came back outside to find his 2013 Audi A4 gone. Ayed, 17, thought it must be a prank.
“I was like, is this for real or is it someone else who worked with me trying to play a joke on me?” said Ayed, a senior at Dublin Scioto High School. Unfortunately, it was very real.
Ayed had become the latest victim to have his vehicle stolen by teenagers, a worrying trend that’s taking place in Columbus and across the nation. Since the coronavirus pandemic began last March, stolen vehicle reports are skyrocketing in major U.S. cities, and Columbus is no different.
Records maintained by the Columbus Division of Police show that since the start of 2021, reports of stolen vehicles – 1,665, as of Feb. 16 – have increased by more than 40% over the prior year during the same period. More troubling, law enforcement agencies say, is that in many of these cases, the thieves stealing or carjacking the vehicles are teenagers.
“The spike in violent crime in the city of Columbus, it almost parallels when everything was shut down,” said Dr. Chenelle Jones, a criminal justice professor at Franklin University whose area of expertise includes juvenile delinquency and policing. “And Columbus is not unique.”
One of Ayed’s co-workers saw the group of suspects pull up behind the Audi in another vehicle before one of them suddenly exited, got into the Audi and zoomed away.
Angry, Ayed made the brash decision to hop in a car with his co-worker to pursue his Audi instead of immediately calling 911. When they pulled up near the Audi at a stoplight, Ayed said the suspects in the original vehicle rammed his co-worker’s car from behind, then one suspect approached the driver’s side window and pointed a gun at them, demanding money.
Ayed and his co-worker gave him $60 – and thought better of continuing their pursuit as the bandits drove off.
Fortunately for Ayed, that image of his Audi speeding off into the distance wasn’t the last he saw of the car. Columbus police recovered the vehicle about 10 days later when officers responded to a report of a group trying to strip the stolen Audi behind a building on the East Side.
When a detective called Ayed to tell him the news, he confirmed Ayed’s suspicion about those responsible for the brazen theft of his Audi: They were juveniles.
What’s motivating teens to commit these sort of crimes is a matter of debate.
Some advocates and experts who spoke with The Dispatch say it’s a symptom of a pandemic that’s left many youth from poor homes desperate for money to pay for necessities like food.
Police, on the other hand, believe the vehicle thefts and carjackings – in many cases initiated by a purse snatching in a parking lot – largely have become a dangerous game among bored teens.
These contrasting perspectives have divided officials who tout different philosophies for discouraging the delinquent behavior. It’s a disagreement that publicly played out recently between the Columbus Division of Police and Franklin County Juvenile Court judges.
During a Feb. 18 news conference where police from local jurisdictions announced a multi-agency effort focused on cracking down on teens behind violent car thefts, police leaders implied that the court system hadn’t been doing its part in keeping dangerous juveniles like those stealing and carjacking vehicles off the streets.
Hours later, all seven of Franklin County’s Juvenile Court judges issued their own statement labeling some of the police claims as “propaganda“that promotes a discredited “tough love” approach to juvenile crime.
Law enforcement officials had revealed at the news conference that they were targeting 40 young offenders and suspects – all teens with an average age of 16, except for one 22-year-old – believed to be responsible for hundreds of car thefts, purse snatchings and other crimes throughout the Columbus area since early December.
Of those individuals, 27 of them have a total 137 delinquency charges – including robbery, kidnapping, receiving stolen property and aggravated robbery – pending in Franklin County Juvenile Court. The most serious offense is an attempted murder charge against a 15-year-old female.
Police are calling their enforcement effort “Operation Game Over,” comparing the juveniles’ criminal activity to a live-action version of the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise.
Cmdr. Duane Mabry, who oversees the property crimes bureau for the Columbus police, reiterated to The Dispatch the contention he made at the news conference that the suspect teenagers tell police they don’t fear the repercussions for their crimes and assume they’ll be back on the street in no time.
But Juvenile Court judges push back against the perception that police officers arrest dangerous juveniles, only to see them quickly returned to the streets by an undiscerning court.
“Our primary concern is the safety of the community, which means holding the right kids (in detention) – the kids who represent the greatest threat to the community,” said Judge Kim A. Browne, administrative judge for the Juvenile Court.
That goal has to be balanced with the court’s philosophy, backed by years of research, that the best outcomes for most juveniles occur through alternatives to incarceration, she said.
And by their measure, it’s an approach that’s working.
From 2015 to 2020, juvenile court case filings decreased by 48%, a decline judges attribute to the county’s Juvenile Justice Community Planning Initiative and Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative.
“Rehabilitating the offender is my ultimate goal,” said Judge Elizabeth Gill. “Knowing that these kids have the rest of their lives ahead, if I haven’t done whatever I can do to rehabilitate them, then I’m not doing my job.”
The judicial system’s less-punitive approach is one lauded by experts such as Chenelle Jones of Franklin University, as well as many groups that aim to help at-risk teens in Columbus and central Ohio.
Jones said that funneling teenagers through the juvenile justice system only hardens them and increases their tendency toward criminal behavior. In close proximity to more-serious offenders, Jones said, they can expand their networks and learn criminal skills.
“Criminalizing children and youth, especially teens, will only exacerbate the problems,” Jones said.
A more effective approach, she said, is one addressing the root of what is precipitating these violent car thefts. With schools being virtual and youth programs shut down, many at-risk youth are without more constructive socialization opportunities. Combine that
with a pandemic, and teens from desperate homes may turn to crime to help their families survive, Jones said.
“When you start to address those needs, then you remove the opportunity to engage in delinquent behavior,” Jones said.
That’s where groups such as Community for New Direction, which helps at-risk teens become successful adults, become invaluable.
John Dawson, interim president and CEO of the nonprofit, said they have done their best to adapt their one-onone mentorship and myriad programming for the pandemic era to keep youths engaged in constructive activities. The solution has been more virtual programming, plus the implementation of an in-person, socially distanced tutoring service during traditional school hours at the Milo Grogan Community Recreation Center.
But Dawson acknowledges that the COVID-19 pandemic has narrowed his organization’s influence on the lives and decisions of some teens.
“The pandemic has limited our ability to have as many contacts a week face to face as we would like,” Dawson said.
Mabry, the commander with Columbus police, conceded that the pandemic may be a factor behind the spike in vehicle thefts and other property crimes. But he said police are less concerned with interpreting “why.”
“I think you could probably attribute it to the pandemic, but what’s in my purview is the fact that it is happening and we got to do something about it,” Mabry said.
Whether they involved teens or adults, stolen vehicles have been at the center of several high-profile incidents in central Ohio this year.
On Feb. 9, an SUV with a 4-monthold baby boy on board was stolen on the Northeast Side while the mother walked her 3-year-old child into a day care. The infant was found safe inside the abandoned vehicle on the Near East Side after two 19-year-old women recognized it from an Amber Alert.
But incidents involving stolen vehicles – or attempts to hijack a vehicle – don’t always end so well.
On Jan. 24, two young men – an 18-year-old and 19-year-old – were driving in a stolen vehicle when they were suspected of gunning down a 14-year-old on the Northeast Side.
And on Feb. 10, a male suspect brandishing a handgun shot a man in a vehicle
he had attempted to carjack at a gas station on the South Side, said Columbus police. The male victim attempted to flee, only to crash into the side of a house 500 feet away.
The victim was treated for multiple gunshot wounds at a nearby hospital and was expected to recover from the injuries, police said.
On Feb. 3, Whitehall police pursued a stolen SUV occupied by three teenage females for four miles before the driver struck another vehicle at an intersection on East Broad Street and crashed. Before the chase, the girls had been part of a group of seven females rampaging through a nearby Target store, smashing items and threatening security, according to police.
After the crash, the three juveniles were taken into custody and treated at nearby hospitals with minor injuries, police said. The driver, a 16-year-old girl, was charged with felony fleeing and receiving stolen property.
As such incidents continue to happen, police worry about the escalating danger to both the public and the reckless juveniles.
“It’s a real problem that’s going on right now and it is putting a lot of the public in danger,” said Sgt. Jon Earl, the public information officer with Whitehall Police. “They’re young and they got a lot of life to live, so we don’t want anything happening to them, either.”
One of the teen suspects identified as being behind the theft of 17-year-old Younes Ayed’s Audi isn’t among the suspects under scrutiny as part of Operation Game Over. But the 16-year-old male has been a suspect in multiple stolen vehicle reports, according to records provided to The Dispatch.
Ayed’s car was returned to him nearly in one piece – he said he only had to buy a rim and two new tires. But he hasn’t been able to shake the trauma of what he endured that December day. Every time he turns on the ignition, he’s reminded of the intruders who so efficiently and callously took it from him.
More recently, his parked Audi was hit by another car that fled the scene. It was the last straw.
“I just don’t want the car no more – I’m just planning on selling it,” Ayed said. “I just feel like it’s bad luck for me.”
Dispatch reporters John Futty and Bethany Bruner contributed to this story. elagatta@dispatch.com @Ericlagatta