Jensen La Vende

De­spites an over­all de­crease in the num­ber of cars stolen be­tween last year and this year, po­lice sta­tis­tics show that there is an in­crease in theft of two spe­cif­ic brands: Mit­subishi Lancers and Nis­san AD wag­ons.

The sta­tis­tics was re­vealed yes­ter­day dur­ing the po­lice week­ly press brief­ing by Sgt Christo­pher Swamber of the Stolen Ve­hi­cles Unit.

This year 715 cars were stolen, ei­ther di­rect­ly from the own­er (rob­bery) or tak­en while the own­er was away from the ve­hi­cle (lar­ce­ny). Last year for the com­bined of­fences 817 ve­hi­cles were tak­en from their own­ers. Last year 12 Mit­subishi Lancers were stolen and al­most three times as much, 33, were stolen so far for this year.

Po­lice have al­so no­ticed a trend as 14 Nis­san AD wag­ons were stolen last year while 26 were tak­en by car thieves this year. The fig­ures are re­flect­ed for pe­ri­ods Jan­u­ary 1 to No­vem­ber 9.Nis­san Ti­idas is al­so a top choice for car thieves with 80 stolen last year and 94 this year, Swamber said.

Swamber, at a pre­vi­ous me­dia brief­ing said Nis­san Ti­idas were tar­get­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly white and sil­ver grey, be­cause of their ease to go un­de­tect­ed on the roads be­cause of the num­ber of sim­i­lar cars on the road.

Asked to ex­plain the jump in stolen Nis­san AD Wag­ons and Lancers, Swamber said that parts for those ve­hi­cles were be­com­ing hard­er to get and the stolen cars are of­ten stripped for spare parts. He said the stolen car rack­et was a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar il­le­gal in­dus­try.

Al­so com­ment­ing on the stolen ve­hi­cles sta­tis­tics was pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cers, ASP Michael Pierre, who said there have been an in­crease in stolen ve­hi­cles in Cen­tral and North­ern Di­vi­sion, the two di­vi­sions which ac­count for the high­est num­ber of mur­ders.

Asked if there was a cor­re­la­tion be­tween the two, Pierre said he could not say un­til there was a prop­er analy­sis of the sta­tis­tics.

Swamber ad­vised car own­ers to place iden­ti­fi­ca­tion marks on their ve­hi­cles in places that they alone would be able to iden­ti­fy if stolen. He said that peo­ple want­i­ng to pur­chase cars should be dili­gent and don't car­ry around wads of cash and so avoid be­ing robbed.