2010-049 RES APPROVING AN APPLICATION FOR AN AUTOMOBILE BURGLARY & THEFT PREVENTION GRANT

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AUTOMOBILE BURGLARY & THEFT PREVENTION AUTHORITY PROGRAM NARRATIVE 1. Problem Statement and Historical Information (See Instructions on page 18) The Northeast Texas Auto Theft Task Force was funded by the ABTPA in September, 1994. Texas DPS MVTS were the only full-time auto theft investigators at that time in the Northeast Texas area. Since then the Texas DPS had gone through some changes and no longer have dedicated auto theft investigators. DPS now has a Criminal Investigation Division. There is a population over 500,000 people. There is approximately 750,000 vehicles registered in the coverage area. Texarkana PD had an ABTPA funded program for a couple of years, but elected to vacate the program when the funding was reduced several years ago. The Northeast Texas Auto Theft Task Force has always had two officers assigned to the program. A sergeant and a detective from the Paris Police department are assigned. They spend 100% of their time to investigate auto crimes in the Northeast Texas area from Sherman to Texarkana, down to Greenville and back to Paris. This is a twelve county area. With the UCR now available, we showed 812 auto thefts last year, which includes all agencies in the coverage area. The year before there was 940 vehicle thefts. This shows a 14% decrease in vehicle thefts. The BMV's for last year was 1,917 and for the year before there were 2,081 reported. This is a decrease of approximately 8%. There are forty-two (42) different law enforcement agencies in our coverage area, not including State and Federal agencies. We do everything possible to assist all agencies when requested. The main problem in our area continues to be small groups consisting of offenders between 12 and 25 years of age. These groups are well organized and loyal to each other. It is difficult for the Courts to detain the juveniles unless they are repeat offenders. We have identified about seven different groups in the Paris area. We have only been able to arrest eleven of the offenders. The Northeast Texas Auto Theft Task Force has co-sponsored an eight hour Basic Motor Vehicle Theft School this year. There were forty students in the class from seven agencies. The Texas Department of Public Safety Criminal Investigation Division sponsored the class with us and allowed us to instruct some of the classes. Lt. Phillip Fuller, with the DPS CID in Garland was a tremendous asset in the organization of this class. We are planning another class in Hunt County later this year. As I stated earlier, there was 812 motor vehicle thefts last year and 940 the year before. This is a 14% ABTPA-21