The growing popularity of Global Positioning System devices has sparked a jump in thefts from vehicles in parts of the Washington metropolitan region.
In D.C., 339 GPS devices have been reported stolen since the beginning of the year, and 56 were taken in the last month, D.C. police spokesman Officer Israel James said.
He said he wasn’t sure whether that represented an increase or a decrease from the previous year.
“But to tell you the truth, I didn’t even know that there were that many stolen,” James said.
The number of such thefts in Montgomery County has skyrocketed by more than 800 percent through mid-August compared with the same period in 2006, police said. There have been 559 thefts from vehicles through Aug. 14 this year, compared with71 through that date last year, county crime statistics show.
While other items such as iPods and satellite radios are also being lifted, the crime boom seems to be fueled mostly by the portable positioning devices, police said.
“We are seeing a trend of GPS systems being stolen from vehicles,” Montgomery County police spokeswoman Melanie Hadley said. “That seems to be the drive for thieves to target vehicles.
These are high-end types of devices that they can probably get quite a bit of money for and sometimes they are pretty easily accessible.”
Hadley said thieves can sell the GPS devices at pawnshops or on the street for several hundred dollars.
Pawnshop employee Yousef Kawar, who manages the Wheaton Trade Center, said he has not noticed an increase in people bringing GPS units to pawnshops.
“If we feel like maybe somebody is bringing us something they got in an illegal way, we don’t take it,” Kawar said. “We try to ask questions to make sure they are the rightful owners of the property they want to pawn. We ask them where they got it, how long they’ve had it, so we can feel them out.”
Bethesda has been hardest hit by the increase in vehicles thefts in Montgomery County, with 165 items stolen this year compared with nine items during the same time period last year.
Hadley said officers also are stepping up their patrols of parking garage “hot spots” where many of the thefts are occurring while people are at work.
