A renewed call to take on car thefts
Authorities: Vehicle stolen in West Hartford had 2-year-old inside
Lawmakers in West Hartford and other suburbs are facing fresh calls to address a spike in car thefts the day after a 16-year-old allegedly stole a vehicle that had a 2-year-old child inside.
“I’m hearing from some constituents,” said Sen. Derek Slap, a Democrat from West Hartford. “We can say, ‘Look, the statistics are much better than they were 10 years ago,’ but nobody wants to hear it and I get that.”
Recently, several high-profile incidents have caught the attention of lawmakers and the public. But an analysis of police data statewide concluded the number of car thefts dropped sharply over the last 30 years to a historic low in 2019.
According to preliminary data that won’t be finalized until the fall, 2020 saw a 19.5% jump in car thefts over the average of the past five years. Those numbers closely reflect national trends during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ken Barone, project manager for the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy at Central Connecticut State University, said.
In the face of public outcry, legislative leaders formed a bipartisan working group to develop policies to address the issue.
“I expect they will come back to the legislature with their recommendations,” said House Speaker Matt Ritter.
Some of those changes might not need legislative approval, said Rep. Steve Stafstrom, a Democrat from Bridgeport who serves on the working group.
“Sometimes there can be a
misunderstanding between the agencies involved in the juvenile justice system,” that can lead to a breakdown in communication, he said.
Stafstrom said lawmakers want to make sure police have access to the information to determine whether to apply for a detention order.
“[Police] probably do need more information about that juvenile’s prior arrests,’’ he said. “A police department in one town isn’t necessarily communicating with the police department in the next town over . ... We’ve identified that as a possible gap in the system.”
Rep. Tammy Exum, a Democrat from West Hartford, said she met with police Chief Vernon Riddick recently to discuss public safety in town. Exum said she has compassion for the victims of crime.
“We’re seeing an uptick in serious crime,” she said. “I care a lot about the prevention side, looking at what it is we need to do to fill the gap so young people have opportunities ... so they are not having this time to spend on these kinds of things.”
Connecticut, like most states, has seen an uptick in car thefts and juvenile crime during the COVID19 pandemic.
The issue has sparked discussion at the Capitol, where Republican lawmakers have called for increasing criteria to allow a judge to declare that a juvenile poses a risk to public safety after a second crime instead of a third; eliminating the current six-hour limit that a juvenile can be held without a court order; ordering that juveniles charged with a second car theft must wear a GPS monitoring device; and changing the pursuit policy to allow police officers to chase car theft suspects under certain circumstances.
Most of those proposals fizzled, though lawmakers approved one change: increasing penalties for adults who coerce juveniles into committing crimes, including stealing cars.
Gov. Ned Lamont said Tuesday that state public safety Commissioner James Rovella, a former Hartford police chief, met with police chiefs from across the state last week to discuss the issue. He said he believed “for those one- or two-offense kids, let’s find a way that we can mitigate the reasons they’re doing this, but that does involve incarceration or detention.”
“But for repeat offenders that cause the overwhelming majority of these crimes ... the consequences I think should be immediate and not have to wait many months,” the governor said. “We’re not talking about incarceration but ways that they can get a mentor and a parole officer that deal with them in a more serious way and prevent this from happening again.”
The West Hartford incident occurred around 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, when a woman reported that her car, with her 2-yearold child inside, had been stolen from an auto shop.
Police located the car and used a tire deflation device to slow the vehicle down, they said. The car was soon involved in an accident and the suspect ran from the vehicle. The child was found — unharmed — in front of a pizza shop on New Britain Avenue.
But in this case, Stafstrom said, “the juvenile detention system worked the way it was intended to. The juvenile was apprehended, the police department did an investigation and submitted a timely request to take the juvenile into detention. After hours, a judge was located, signed that order, and a juvenile who committed a henious offense was taken into custody.”