However, there is good and bad news about car theft. While the chances of your car being stolen are less, so is the chance of it ever being recovered or anyone being prosecuted, the statistics show. In 1997, only about 14 percent of car thefts result in an arrest, the insurance industry reports. And in 1997, only about 60 percent of motor vehicle owners who had their car stolen saw their cars again. Police and insurance industry analysts say the lower recovery rate is due to overseas shipment of vehicles.
Vehicles can sell up to four times their original value in other countries.
The NICB estimates that more than 200,000 cars were illegally shipped out of the United States in 1997. Deborah Ross, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in North Carolina, wonders whether it is a good police policy to set up a crime. With crime down maybe it's a technology thing where they want to catch somebody who normally wouldn't steal a car. Police say that they have not used the GPS system to track people to chop shops or for longer term investigations into car theft rings. Phil Suitt, assigned to the Austin Police Department's car theft interdiction project.