Buffalo vehicle thefts remain high, but are decreasing in 2024 (2024)

Patrick Gormley walked out the door of his Old First Ward home on a May morning last year and discovered his car missing, a pile of broken glass where it had been parked.

The owner of a Kia, he quickly realized he was the latest victim of Buffalo’s car theft surge.

Police recovered his car within a day and called him down to the impound lot on Dart Street. The thieves had left burned blunts in the doors and had rifled through and stole his belongings. His insurance company dropped his policy.

Gormley says he was relatively lucky to recover his leased car so quickly.

Still, the feeling of violation and frustration that comes with personal property crime remained, especially with the flippant attitude the thieves who stole his car displayed.

“The two men that stole the car actually, as they were pulling out of the driveway, even honked a few times as they pulled out,” Gormley said.

While car thefts remain high in Buffalo and across Western New York, there is evidence that the numbers are coming down. Data from the Buffalo Police Department shows a 38% dip through May 28 of this year, when compared to the same time period in 2023.

Still, that doesn’t bring the numbers close to what existed before the Kia Challenge spread on social media and encouraged thefts of Kias. Just 673 vehicles were reported stolen in Buffalo in 2019, the lowest number in the seven-year period of data provided to The Buffalo News by the police department. That number jumped to 1,393 by 2022. Last year, that number was doubled to 2,885.

Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said that car theft has always been a crime committed primarily by young people. But after it became widely known, through social media, that it was easy to break into and start Hyundai and Kia vehicles, young people no longer had to rely on vehicle owners leaving their car engines running or keys in the car, the most common ways that people would carry out car thefts previously.

“With the advent of the Kia and Hyundai challenge, that completely changed the game of this whole thing, which led to our dramatic, significant increase,” Gramaglia said.

And the data also point to car thieves trending younger. In 2017, 18% of all people arrested for car thefts in Buffalo were 17 or younger. Last year, that number jumped to 43%. Through the end of March this year, 60% of those arrested were not considered adults by the justice system, according to the Buffalo Police Department data.

Acting Erie County District Attorney Michael Keane said he has seen a slight jump since 2019 in the number of car theft cases referred to his office involving defendants 17 and younger. But those numbers can be misleading, as his office only sees cases that rise to the level of criminal prosecution, referred out of family court because of the severity of the crime.

“This is a problem that we didn’t see 10 years ago, where they’re stealing cars here three, four or five times over the course of a couple of weeks,” he said.

Both Gramaglia and Keane said they have been fighting for more cases to be referred out of family court and into criminal court, but have found that process difficult.

Juvenile delinquent and adolescent offender status offers lighter punishments and, most often, is handled in family court, a separate system that works with parents and young offenders to try to come up with solutions that do not include incarceration.

First-time offenders are usually charged with misdemeanor unauthorized use of a vehicle for a car theft, barring other charges such as reckless driving, weapons charges or use of the vehicle to carry out other felony crimes.

Gramaglia said officers in his department know many of the repeat offenders by name.

“There is a small number of juveniles and adolescent offenders that are stealing these cars,” he said.

In late April, a 14-year-old girl was arrested on one felony and two misdemeanors related to car thefts on consecutive days.

“It doesn’t matter how many times they get arrested,” Gramaglia said. “They will be released immediately, and nothing happens to them in family court, unless and until they finally kill somebody.”

And Keane said that, at times, it has been difficult, even when an adolescent has repeatedly been arrested for vehicle thefts, to convince family court to refer their cases to his office.

“It’s been an uphill battle for us,” he said.

But some changes on both the street and in the courts may be helping to turn the tide on the number of thefts.

Keane said his office recently created a new unit, dedicating more experienced attorneys to vehicle theft prosecutions, and it has been paying off. On the cases his office has for adolescent offenders, judges have become more likely to hand down stiffer sentences.

“We are putting them in the grand jury, indicting and indicting them on felonies,” he said. “And when we do that, and we get them in state prison, number one, they can’t steal a car anymore, and number two, I think it sends a message to the community that we’re taking this much more seriously.”

Gramaglia said he cannot control changes to state law or how the court system handles youthful offenders. But, his department and others are using strategies he believes are contributing to the now declining numbers.

One method is public education, reminding people to use anti-theft devices and common sense to make cars harder to steal, including locking doors and taking the keys out.

Another is the increased reliance on helicopters from partner departments, mainly the Erie County Sheriff’s Office and New York State Police, to help safely track stolen cars when possible.

“Based on what the helicopter is calling out above, our cars will parallel, they’ll remain in the area, and then as soon as they bail, the helicopter calls out the direction to the occupants and our guys will swoop in and they’ll grab them and we’ll make arrests,” Gramaglia said.

The helicopters are particularly helpful because many of the young people repeatedly stealing cars know that most police departments, including Buffalo, have no pursuit policies, which were put in place to avoid dangerous chases through residential neighborhoods.

Some, realizing police won’t chase them because of the policy, will approach cruisers and call out to officers, Gramaglia said.

“They’re actually pulling up to police cars, and they’re taunting our police cars,” he said.

Erie County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Ryan Rogers has been flying the department’s helicopter since 2019. The number of calls from Buffalo police and other departments to assist with stolen vehicle pursuits has increased exponentially, he said.

“We recognize the danger to the public posed by high speed vehicle pursuits, and that’s a risk that agencies have been trying to mitigate for the past several years,” Rogers said.

The sheriff’s helicopter can track stolen vehicles without having to have patrol cars in close pursuit or engaged in high speed pursuit, which presents a risk to the officers, the public and the offenders, he said.

“We’ve had tremendous success and they continue to call for us because this method has proven to be very effective,” Rogers added.

And Gramaglia said his department uses the same microgrid system it deploys in violence prevention to map stolen cars and where they are dumped, then sends out patrols to create a presence in car theft hotspots.

“When we get our detectives out there and patrol out there, we know where the hotspots for dumping stolen cars are,” he said.

Gramaglia said he hopes the courts will hand down harsher punishments in stolen vehicle cases to create a greater deterrent.

“Given what has gone on over the last several years, judges need to take a much harder stance and set the tone so the word spreads that there are going to be consequences,” he said.