Numbers are hard to come by but one report found they were up 93 per cent across 10 cities from 2019 to 2023
John Ehemann was visiting one of his regular clients, an Exxon station in downtown Memphis, one morning this past October. On the way in, he noticed a man in a reflective safety vest sitting on an oil drum outside but thought little of it.
Numbers on carjackings are harder to come by because not every city reports them. The Council on Criminal Justice report shows instances of the crime up 93 per cent across 10 cities between 2019 and 2023, with a slight reduction over the past year. Kias and Hyundais are particularly popular targets because many U.S. models lack engine immobilizers, an anti-theft measure that requires the owner’s key fob be nearby for the car to start. This means thieves can start these cars by removing the top of the ignition switch and turning it with a USB stick. Videos by Milwaukee car thieves calling themselves the Kia Boyz exposed this gaping security flaw in the summer of 2022 and demonstrated how to exploit it.
“You’ve got girls who are 11, 12, 13 years old, who can’t even drive, cranking up cars with key fobs,” he said. Ernesto Lopez, a researcher at the Council on Criminal Justice, has had similar difficulty with the numbers. He expected carjackings would go up as auto thefts went down or vice versa – that making it harder to steal parked cars could prompt some criminals to carjack instead, for instance. But the data didn’t show such a correlation. Nor do the numbers on carjackings appear to follow those on similar crimes, such as armed robberies. “It’s a puzzle,” Mr. Lopez said.