Name: Puzzling spike in auto thefts, many of them violent, worries D.C.-area police
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Puzzling spike in auto thefts, many of them violent, worries D.C.-area police

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This article was published more than&nbsp;2 years agoGift ShareJose Banzon, who works in advertising, was spreading holiday cheer in his 2014 Acura SUV, bringing gifts of wine and candy to clients in the District. Just after 6 p.m. on Dec. 15, on the eastbound side of U Street NW in the Cardozo area, he pulled to the curb and got out, leaving the motor running, a bad mistake.“Now, all this took about 30&nbsp;seconds,” he said of what happened next.In the back of the Acura, in a box, were a half-dozen bottles of cabernet sauvignon and packages of chocolate truffles. He had stopped the SUV to move the gifts to the front seat so he could easily reach them as he made his rounds. Grabbing the box, he stepped to the front passenger door, opened it and put the presents inside.When he glanced up, he was stunned to see a thief at the wheel, reaching for the gear shift. The Acura was squeezed behind a parked taxicab. As the young man backed up before speeding away, the open door caught Banzon, knocking him to the ground, and the right front tire rolled over his right ankle, which “did kind of hurt, yeah,” he said.AdvertisementAt home in Northern Virginia two nights later, his wounded lower leg wrapped in a brace, Banzon, 59, recalled, “The whole thing happened so fast.”His is a familiar tale. In the District and most of its suburbs, for reasons no one can definitively pinpoint, auto thefts this year have increased sharply, especially the “jump-in” type that Banzon experienced. More worrisome for police, violent carjackings, in which vehicles are stolen by force, are also way up in the Washington area — including one last week that left a motorist dead from a gunshot wound.“The golden question is why is this going on,” said Assistant D.C. Police Chief Lamar Greene. “And I have to tell you, honestly, I don’t know.”Is the coronavirus pandemic partly to blame? With so many delivery people on the roads, climbing out of running autos to drop off meals and packages, targets of opportunity are plentiful for carjackers and jump-in thieves. Yet police in several jurisdictions said most victims have been ordinary motorists like Banzon, not commercial drivers.AdvertisementAs of Friday, the city had recorded 3,137 auto thefts this year, many of them jump-ins, a 49&nbsp;percent increase over the same period in 2019. What’s more disturbing is the 141&nbsp;percent rise in carjackings (a separate category from auto thefts), with 328 through mid-December, up from 136 in the same span last year.Every police precinct, encompassing rich and poor neighborhoods alike, has experienced an increase in carjackings, notably the high-crime Seventh District in far Southeast Washington, where this year’s 84 carjackings represent a 250 percent spike. In the Second District, covering affluent parts of Northwest Washington, the total has inched from eight to nine.Greene, chief of patrol for the city’s northern quadrants, said 60 to 70&nbsp;percent of carjacked vehicles are quickly recovered. “They’re being found very close to the areas where they’re being taken,” he said, suggesting that most culprits merely wanted to joyride. Interrogations of suspects have generally confirmed this.AdvertisementHe said the same is true with thefts.“You can attribute a lot of it, I think, to a very dangerous form of having fun,” Greene said, adding that many carjackers are gun-toting teenagers who often rob their victims of wallets, purses and cellphones before driving off in the autos.“The ones who’ll talk, some of them will tell us, look, they just like certain kinds of vehicles and like driving around in them,” said Greene, who worries about the 35&nbsp;percent of vehicles that aren’t recovered quickly. In those cases, he said, they might have been stolen to be used in crimes such as stickups and drive-by shootings.On the night of Dec.&nbsp;2, for instance, 15-month-old Carmelo Duncan was riding in a car with his father in Northeast Washington when gunmen opened fire on the vehicle, killing the toddler. Police released a surveillance photo of an SUV they said might be linked to the attack — a BMW X5 stolen shortly before the shooting.AdvertisementIn Maryland and Virginia, authorities offered a similar overview of carjackings and jump-in thefts as of mid-December. Like Greene, they said they could only speculate as to why the numbers have risen markedly this year.Prince George’s County had recorded 248 carjackings, up from 87 in the same period last year. Arlington County and Alexandria, which each had one in 2019, had 14 and nine, respectively, this year. Among close-in D.C. suburbs, only Fairfax County, with 11, hasn’t experienced an increase. It had 11 last year, too.The kind of outcome authorities fear most with carjackings occurred Friday night in Landover, Md., Prince George’s County police said. They said Clifford Ellis, 63, was shot to death in his driveway by an attacker who forced Ellis out of his pickup truck and drove away in it.AdvertisementA 31-year-old man was arrested that evening after what police said was a rampage in which he menaced several other people and apparently tried to steal two more vehicles.As for jump-in thefts, the biggest spike, more than threefold, is in Prince George’s, where the total was 469 by mid-December, up from 143 last year.In Montgomery County, where 34 carjackings have been reported compared with 22 for the same period in 2019, Police Lt. Monique Tompkins, deputy director of the major crimes division, said she wonders whether pandemic idleness is part of the cause.“This is just an assumption,” she said, “but my feeling is, when you have young folks who are not in school, what takes over is boredom. Especially in the cold weather, with no outdoor activities. There’s just nothing for them to do.”AdvertisementShe recalled the recent case of four D.C. juveniles who were about to head home from Silver Spring on a slow-moving Metrobus. “They saw this lady in her vehicle,” Tompkins said, “and they were just, like, they wanted to get a ride. So they decided they’d go drag her out of her vehicle and beat her up and take her car, which they did.”Mindful of the peril, The Washington Post has halted predawn newspaper deliveries in certain areas, telling affected subscribers in a Nov.&nbsp;30 note that some carriers “have experienced repeated attempted robberies and carjackings.”Asked about the precaution, Post spokeswoman Kristine Coratti Kelly said in an email that one delivery route was targeted more than others, but that “we’ve had nearly two dozen incidents since March in different parts of the city.”It’s not unusual for the perpetrators to be adolescents.AdvertisementOn Nov.&nbsp;3, for example, four boys, 13 and 14, two of them with pistols, carjacked an Infiniti G35 in Northwest Washington while committing a spate of armed muggings that night, police alleged. A month earlier, police said, a 21-year-old man and three boys, 13 and 14, were arrested in the Seventh District and accused of stealing a vehicle at gunpoint.Of the many violent car thieves roaming the metropolitan area, few if any have been as prolific as three young men who allegedly carried out what a prosecutor in the District called a 12-hour “reign of terror” in late October.The tally in one afternoon and evening: Seven armed carjackings and an attempted armed carjacking with about a dozen victims, at least four of them children.“That no one other than one of the defendants was injured during the carjacking spree is a small miracle,” Assistant U.S. Attorney James Nelson told a judge.AdvertisementThe three, all 18, were identified by authorities as Romeo Ramirez, Cristian Santay-Rosales and Diego Lopez. They pleaded not guilty and are jailed pending federal prosecution. Ramirez’s attorney declined to discuss the case, and lawyers for the others did not return phone messages seeking comment.In interviews, crime reports and filings in U.S. District Court in Washington, the FBI and police in D.C. and Maryland alleged the following:At 1:55 p.m. on Oct. 26, an overcast Monday, the men, in a Toyota Camry, pulled up beside a 2017 Porsche Macan on Upton Terrace NW in the Spring Valley area. Ramirez, carrying a 9mm semiautomatic handgun with an extended magazine, pointed it at the Porsche driver and ordered him out.The Porsche, with Ramirez at the wheel, and the Camry sped away. But anti-theft technology caused the Porsche to stall in a busy intersection nearby — the first of several misadventures for the trio. Ramirez, abandoning the Porsche, hurried back to the Camry and the three went looking for another vehicle.A few minutes later, at 2:24 p.m., they saw a 2020 Volkswagen Tiguan on O Street NW in Georgetown. Ramirez, waving the 9mm, ordered the SUV’s occupants to “Get out!” As two adult victims scrambled for safety with a 5-year-old boy, the Camry and the Tiguan vanished down the road.The driver had left a credit card in the SUV, investigators said, and a surveillance camera later recorded Ramirez using it in a minimart.Two hours passed before the next carjacking. On Luzon Avenue NW in the Brightwood area, Ramirez, Lopez and Santay-Rosales, all in the Tiguan, confronted the driver of a 2016 Camry in his driveway. Wielding the pistol, Ramirez dragged the man from the car by his shirt before the three assailants fled in the stolen Camry and Tiguan.At 5:04&nbsp;p.m. in the Brookland neighborhood, the three were in the carjacked Camry, cruising along 12th Street NE. What had become of the Tiguan isn’t clear. Santay-Rosales and Ramirez got out and approached the driver of a 2017 Mercedes-Benz GLC 300, who saw the black gun and promptly surrendered his ride.Having upgraded to a Mercedes and ditching the stolen Camry, the men spied a 2018 Volvo T5 on Franklin Street NE in Brookland. At 6:19&nbsp;p.m., Ramirez and Santay-Rosales ambushed the driver, with Ramirez shouting, “Get out of the car or I’ll shoot!”The victim ran off — taking his keys.The foiled robbers snatched a wallet from the Volvo and returned to the Mercedes. Twenty minutes later, they arrived on Parkwood Place NW in the Mount Pleasant area, where a woman and her three children were in an Infiniti QX60. Thrusting the 9mm in the woman’s face, Ramirez yelled for her get out.Next, traveling in the Mercedes and the freshly stolen Infiniti, the three carjackers stopped in Rock Creek Park at 6:50&nbsp;p.m. As in all the robberies that day, they were dutifully wearing pandemic masks. Ramirez aimed the pistol at a terrified man in a 2015 Subaru Crosstrek and demanded, “Stop screaming!”Nelson, the prosecutor, later wrote in a court filing, “When the driver of the Subaru asked if he could keep his phone to call for help, Defendant Ramirez grabbed the phone and threw it.” Leaving the Infiniti in the park, Ramirez drove away in the Subaru while Lopez and Santay-Rosales followed in the Mercedes.D.C. police soon spotted the Mercedes and a high-speed chase ensued, with the SUV barreling through red lights and on the wrong sides of roads before crashing. Lopez, who suffered a leg injury, and Santay-Rosales were arrested. U.S. Park Police pursued Ramirez in the Subaru, but he bailed out and ran.Finally, at 1:25&nbsp;a.m. on Oct. 27, a little less than 12&nbsp;hours after the first carjacking, Ramirez walked up to a 2019 Kia Optima at a gas station in Capitol Heights, Md., frisked the driver at gunpoint and stole his wallet, phone and SUV. Prince George’s County police stopped and arrested him 90&nbsp;minutes later.When he was captured, authorities said, he was carrying a Springfield 9mm semiautomatic with 16 rounds in an extended magazine and another in the chamber.“Anybody can look at that and see the potential for disaster,” said Greene, the assistant police chief. “That’s how dangerous the problem is.”He said: “They could have killed someone, or picked a victim who was armed himself, and it escalates. Or they could have encountered law enforcement, and they wind up in an exchange of gunfire, and innocent civilians are subjected to that.”As for jump-ins, those can be hazardous, too.And a little embarrassing: One day last week, after D.C. Council member left her 2015 Subaru Outback idling in front of a bakery while she dashed inside for a moment, she emerged to find an empty space where the SUV had been parked. News of the theft soon spread on Twitter.“It was foolish,” Cheh said of her mistake, adding that she learned a lesson about always taking the keys.Jose Banzon said the same.Hobbling on crutches with sprained ligaments and contusions in his lower right leg, he recalled lying on the pavement as his Acura disappeared around a bend on U Street, the front passenger door and rear hatch still open — bungee cords and water bottles and an ice scraper spilling out of the back, clattering along the road.“It’s U Street,” he said. “Not some sketchy area. Not some dark alley.”The vibrant neighborhood is filled with trendy restaurants and bars, boutiques and luxury apartments. “It could have been Georgetown,” he said, and sighed.“I guess you’ve got to be more aware of your surroundings. I mean, if it happened to me there, I guess it could happen anywhere.”Gift ArticleTOP STORIESThe DMV GuideWhether you’re a lifelong resident of D.C. or you just moved here, we’ve got you covered.Try a different topic or to save your preferences

This article was published more than&nbsp;2 years agoGift ShareJose Banzon, who works in advertising, was spreading holiday cheer in his 2014 Acura SUV, bringing gifts of wine and candy to clients in the District. Just after 6 p.m. on Dec. 15, on the eastbound side of U Street NW in the Cardozo area, he pulled to the curb and got out, leaving the motor running, a bad mistake.“Now, all this took about 30&nbsp;seconds,” he said of what happened next.In the back of the Acura, in a box, were a half-dozen bottles of cabernet sauvignon and packages of chocolate truffles. He had stopped the SUV to...

Puzzling spike in auto thefts, many of them violent, worries D.C.-area police

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