Car theft numbers in Bellingham ‘staggering,’ as rate quadruples in first 2 months of 2022
During January and February, 136 vehicles were reported stolen in Bellingham — a 300% increase from the 34 vehicles reported stolen in the city during the same two months one year earlier and an average of 2.3 cars thefts per day.
Add in the 26 stolen vehicles reported in the first 14 days of March, according to the Bellingham’s crime statistics webpage on Tuesday, March 15, and Bellingham in the first 72 days of 2022 already has surpassed the 155 car thefts in the city in all of 2019.
”It really is staggering the number of car thefts we’ve seen already this year,” Bellingham Police Department Lt. Claudia Murphy told The Bellingham Herald. “Unfortunately, there isn’t a single reason why it’s skyrocketed, and therefore there is not a single solution to make it go away.
“There is not a panacea where we’re going to be able to bring it down below 18 in a month like it was two or three years ago.”
Reported stolen car thefts increased dramatically in 2020 and 2021, going from annual totals of 165, 181 and 155 from 2017 through 2019 to 380 reported in 2020 and 369 in 2021, according to the crime statistics.
But with 162 already in 2022, Bellingham is currently on pace for 821 vehicle thefts this year — more than double the numbers it saw in 2020 and 2021.
It has gotten to the point that some days it seems like stolen cars are falling from the sky in Bellingham.
▪ On March 3, a stolen truck crashed into a Bellingham Police Department patrol vehicle after running a red light.
▪ On Feb. 13, a crime scene investigator responding to the report of a recovered stolen car spotted another car that had been reported stolen driving in the area. Though driver walked away before the investigator was able to determine the car was stolen, he was arrested less than 24 hours later by the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office driving yet another stolen car containing four guns that were in the vehicle at the time it was taken from outside a Bellingham business.
Unfortunately, that’s only a drop in the bucket for what Bellingham has seen recently.
During January, the Bellingham Police Department received 74 stolen vehicle reports, including at least one reported stolen on 27 of 31 days, Murphy reported. By comparison, there were three days when four cars were reported stolen in the same day and and additional two days when six were stolen in one day.
In February, when there were 62 reported stolen vehicles, police had only three days when there were no reports of any stolen cars, while there were seven days of at least four reported stolen vehicles, including seven on Feb. 4, according to Murphy.
January’s and February’s monthly totals represent the highest and second-highest totals the city has seen in a month over the past four-plus years, dating back to January of 2018. The previous high was 53 reported in November of 2021.
Bellingham is not alone in seeing a spike in car thefts, though its unlikely many other areas saw rates quadruple during the first two months of the year, as the city has.
In a news release Friday, March 11, the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office reported that in the past six months it has seen 112 vehicle thefts, which was more than double the 52 in the previous six months.
Statewide, there were 8,320 vehicle thefts in January and February, according to a tweet by the Puget Sound Auto Theft Task Force, which was an 83% increase from the 4,552 seen in Washington from those months in 2021.
The main reasons for the car thefts in Bellingham are many, Murphy said, as it’s not just about “making an easy dollar” by stripping a car for parts to sell, though that’s definitely part of the equation.
“Others need the car to make drug deliveries or steal catalytic converters or steal large amounts of merchandise from local stores,” Murphy said. “Using a stolen car makes it more difficult for law enforcement to find them, as there is no car to trace back to the thieves.”
Still others are looking for a dry, warm place to use drugs during Bellingham’s winter months, Murphy said, while others are just “looking to take a joy ride.”
Crime and punishment
But why is Bellingham seeing so many more cars stolen so far this year than in recent years?
“That is a difficult thing to answer, but the lack of accountability and consequences must have something to do with it,” Murphy told The Herald.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Whatcom County Jail has been forced to institute booking restrictions to limit how many people are housed in a confined space, due to a number of reasons, including COVID, jail staffing and facility issues at the aging jail, Murphy said.
As a result, people who were arrested for property crimes or those who don’t represent a serious threat to public safety (such as those arrested for violent offenses, felony DUI, sex offenses and burglary) aren’t booked into jail or are released shortly afterward to help keep the jail population down.
Getting those suspected of crimes into court also has been hampered, as COVID restrictions have limited trials and created a tremendous backlog of cases for Whatcom County Superior Court to work its way through.
“It all means that our car thieves and our thieves in general are out there and for them, there is no immediate consequence,” Murphy said. “For a lot of them, if you don’t go to jail right away, you’re just free to commit more crime. That’s truly the attitude of many of the criminals. If there is no consequence, there is no fear of going to jail or no fear of having to sit in jail, then they feel free to commit more and more crime.”
For example, the Bellingham Police Department made 25 arrests in January and February for theft of a motor vehicle or possession of a stolen vehicle for incidents that occurred 2022, The Herald’s analysis of Whatcom County Jail logs showed. Of those, seven people still remain in jail, though all seven faced additional charges, while 10 were released within 48 hours of their arrest.
Included among those 25 arrests was a Jan. 18 booking on suspicion of possession of a stolen vehicle and release later that same day of Shilo Aron Englert. Englert was arrested again Feb. 20 on suspicion of second-degree murder in the Feb. 8 killing of woman in a stairwell at 22 North apartment complex in downtown Bellingham.
Another, Brandon Lee Moore, has twice been arrested on suspicion for possession of a stolen vehicle — once on Jan. 1 and a second time 16 days later. Both vehicles — a Chevy Silverado and a Honda Civic — were reported stolen out of Pierce County.
“With COVID and the slow down its caused in the court system, consequences are a long way off,” Murphy told The Herald. “The thefts will go down, once some of our known car thieves have cases catch up to them and they get prison sentences.”
Resources to investigate
But the COVID-induced lack of immediate consequences are only part of the reason for Bellingham’s staggering increase in car thefts, Murphy said.
The Bellingham Police Department, like many law enforcement agencies in the area, also is experiencing a serious staffing shortage, Murphy said, and that has resulted in the elimination of dedicated anti-crime teams that can focus on a certain type of theft, recovery or processing.
Instead of those specialized units and others, officers are needed to patrol the streets, Murphy said, adding that the department’s detective division is also currently down two detectives.
“It makes it very difficult to have people investigate dozens and dozens of car thefts per month, because we don’t have enough detectives to be able to take each one of these car thefts and have them investigate it for who did it,” Murphy said.
That’s not to say the car thefts aren’t being investigated.
Murphy said crime scene investigators are still processing the vehicles, and if they get fingerprints that match somebody who is already in the system, probable cause is filed with the court for that person’s arrest.
But without the resources to dig deeper into who is committing the thefts, many of the crimes are going unsolved, and that in turn leads to more thefts, Murphy said, as those thieves remain on the streets.
“It’s primarily a staffing issue and the sheer volume that is preventing us from investigating the way we would like at this time,” Murphy said. “Obviously being able to investigate and put people in jail for car theft tends to bring the car theft numbers down.
“There used to be a few years there where we would know who our car thieves were and when they went to jail or prison, our car theft numbers plummeted because it was the same five or six people. You knew when one of them was in prison. Then when they got out, car theft numbers would jump back up, because that was their vein of crime — it was what they specialized in.”
This story was originally published March 17, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
