Police warn of spike in car thefts across Charlotte

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said it saw a 12 percent increase in auto thefts across the city in 2018.

[RELATED: CMPD chief believes new tactics helped drive down crime in 2018]

Police said in the department’s South Division alone, there were 145 auto thefts reported in 2018. That’s a 54 percent increase from the previous year.

Officers said most of the thefts are happening at convenience stores or gas stations when people leave their keys inside an unattended vehicle.

They called it a crime of opportunity, with thieves looking for unlocked cars and stumbling across the keys inside.

[RELATED: A look at the most-stolen cars in North Carolina]

CMPD said it’s working to prevent these crimes with signs in parking lots and checking on common places that become targets. Officers are urging people to protect their cars by locking their doors and taking out their valuables.

“The more time from an auto theft when it occurs to the time we recover it, I would say. and I’m speculating to a certain extent, the harder it is to prove who stole it because these cars can change hands,” Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Capt. Christian Wagner said.

Police located nearly half of the roughly 2,800 stolen cars across last year in Charlotte.

Arrests were made in only 18 percent of those cases.

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