Carjackings, thefts on the rise
Columbus police to revamp earlier effort targeting young thieves
As Columbus police see another spike in the number of cars being stolen, particularly by teens, an operation that saw success earlier this year is being resurrected.
Cmdr. Duane Mabry said the rebirth of “Operation Game Over,” which started earlier this year after three clusters of teens were identified as being involved in a number of purse thefts, car thefts and carjackings, will hopefully help find those responsible for the recent uptick.
Mabry said that in recent weeks officers and detectives have gotten more reports of cars being stolen, especially at gas stations and in parking lots where vehicles are left unattended for short periods of time.
“It’s not just about that car, it’s about all those other crimes too,” he said. “We’re watching these young people steal these cars and then caravan to the next crime, stealing cars along the way.”
Police are concerned because not only are teens involved, but some incidents have also involved pre-teens or tweens. There have also been two higher profile incidents that led to significant police resources in the response, one of which involved a 12-year-old.
On Sept. 15, a 22-year-old nurse at Nationwide Children’s Hospital was waiting in his car around 11:20 p.m. at Lazelle and Jackson streets in German Village. The man, who asked that his name not be used because the suspects have been released from custody while awaiting juvenile court proceedings, said he had the window in the car rolled down while he was waiting to pick up a friend.
He said two youths approached him and asked for directions, which he gave them, but then the youths asked for a ride and he said no.
“They started to walk away and then approached me again really quickly while the window was still down with a gun and demanded the car,” the man said.
The youths also demanded the man’s wallet and phone, but he refused and they quickly drove off in the car. The man later found out the gun, which he described as metal, with a regular-sized barrel and no orange tip, was an Airsoft gun.
The man said he immediately called police and they quickly spotted the car, which led to a highspeed chase where speeds reached more than 100 mph, according to police.
The chase ended when the vehicle’s driver — a 12-year-old boy — crashed the vehicle on North Stygler Road. The driver and his 13-year-old passenger, who is also his brother, were both taken to Nationwide Children’s Hospital for treatment of serious injuries.
The man said he was told by police that the 13year-old had been involved in at least one other crash involving a stolen vehicle. And three days before he was carjacked, a similar incident had been reported in the same general area. Police told the man the two juvenile who robbed him could be responsible.
Two days after that carjacking, on Sept. 17, a group of teens crashed a car that had been reported stolen on Sept. 11, involving four other vehicles in the crash. The teens then carjacked another vehicle and went to a townhouse complex nearby, causing a multi-hour barricade situation involving SWAT personnel.
The situation was resolved peacefully with three teens, ages 15 to 17, eventually being taken into police custody.
The teens involved in the barricade were known to police as alleged players in criminal groups stealing cars that police were tracking in earlier iterations of Game Over.
Officers are also concerned about the number of tweens who are becoming involved.
The 13-year-old arrested on Sept. 15 had another pending case at the time, according to court records, and is one of several younger teens or preteens that have been involved in stealing vehicles recently.
Mabry said police are seeing teens and tweens more frequently being connected to stolen cars or similar crimes, which leads to concerns about how those children are escalating their behavior.
“A lot of these crimes are gateway crimes and they commit them at young ages,” Mabry said. “If we don’t do something about them now, they’ll progress down the road. We see the pattern over and over again. We see them stealing cars, and they progress into getting a gun out of that car and now, they’re committing robberies.”
Mabry said in most cases, the teens that officers and detectives are encountering most often are 14 to 17 years old. But seeing a 12-year-old involved with a 13-year-old sibling in the German Village incident is especially concerning.
“I’m a broken record, but they’re going to end up getting killed or killing somebody,” he said.
Mabry said police from across Franklin County did see a decrease in activity among the groups identified and targeted in the first two iterations of “Game Over” in early 2021. He credits that to media attention on the crimes, concerted law enforcement effort and cooperation with the juvenile court system to keep those teens that are believed to be responsible for the most violent crimes behind bars.
“We’ve seen with some of these kids, when they’re not around one or two people in their group, they go back to being pretty normal kids,” Mabry said. “When they’re around these other people, they do some pretty serious criminal activity.”
He said law enforcement from across the county, as well as representatives of the juvenile court system, are scheduled to meet in the next several weeks to get another round of similar “Game Over” enforcement up and running.
Mabry said that also includes collaboration within Columbus Division of Police across units to determine if there is a connection between the teens involved in the crimes Mabry’s detectives are investigating and other robberies, assaults or other serious crimes.
There is some preliminary evidence that some of the teens Mabry’s detectives have been investigating could be connected to some of the ongoing violent crime in the Short North area, including armed robberies by teens on electric scooters.
“Most of that is still under investigation, but we do see some correlations,” Mabry said.
There are some things that the public can do, he said. Those steps include keeping a vehicle locked at gas stations and convenience stores, no matter how long the car is unattended. Mabry also said to not leave the keys in vehicles because the teen groups involved in many vehicle thefts have been known to take keys and lock the vehicle, making the driver think they have locked themselves out. When the driver goes to call for help, the vehicle is then stolen by the teens.
“We need people to stop leaving cars unattended,” Mabry said. “That car is now being used in a series of other crimes, whether it’s purse thefts or robberies or shootings or up to even a homicide and these cars are being used over and over again.”
The man who was carjacked in German Village said he hopes the kids involved get some punishment beyond probation but doesn’t want to see them locked away. He said he’d like to see a program where there’s a rigid school structure and strict monitoring of the kids, more than what probation can currently do.
“It’d be one thing if they do this very stupid thing and kind of realize they can’t again, but these kids aren’t learning,” the man said. bbruner@dispatch.com @bethany_bruner