In This Florida County, 62 Percent of Car Thieves Are Kids

Twitter users are well aware of the hilarious and perplexing misadventures — usually fueled by alcohol or meth — of “Florida Man” and “Florida Woman,” but in Pinellas County, the person behind the wheel of your recently stolen vehicle is much more likely to be a Florida boy or girl.

There’s an epidemic afoot in the Gulf Coast county. Local law enforcement is scrambling to combat a growing tide of repeat juvenile car thieves as the danger on the county’s roads grows. Meanwhile, it seems local residents haven’t exactly made the thefts a difficult task.

The problem in the Clearwater-St. Petersburg area comes alive through a recent investigation by the Tampa Bay Times.

It isn’t an issue of statistics skewing the problem into something that looks worse than it is, either. Of all counties in the U.S., including far more populous jurisdictions, Pinellas is tops for kiddie car crime. In 2015, the county recorded 499 felony arrests for juvenile auto theft.

The same year, 62 percent of the county’s stolen vehicles were purloined by individuals under the age of 18.

The offenders, who frequently film their exploits and end up crashing, were as young as 10. A popular pastime — “doing the dash,” according to a two-time perp — involves kids burying a stolen vehicle’s speedometer needle while live-streaming the act via their phones.

The epidemic turned fatal long ago. Last year, three teen girls drowned after their stolen Honda Accord ended up at the bottom of a carefully landscaped cemetery pond. In response to the trend, local law enforcement has been forced to shovel scarce resources towards the problem — helicopters, dedicated officers, dogs.

While it sounds like the plot of an old B-movie about the dangers of smoking dope or hanging out with “artists,” the problem is all too real, and it’s not fueled by monetary gain or other adult motivations.

“How we haven’t had more people run over, injured, killed, just walking down the street, small kids, I have no idea,” St. Petersburg Detective Tim Brown told the Tampa Bay Times. “Because they come around the corner on two wheels. And it’s just — it’s fun for them.”

By the newspaper’s tally, 742 juvenile offenders were arrested for auto theft over an 18-month period in Pinellas County (January 2015 to June 2016). In 250 of the 529 thefts — 39 percent — kids entered an unlocked vehicle and discovered keys helpfully left behind by the owner. And that’s not the only thing they found. In numerous instances (52, to be exact), they also stumbled upon the owner’s gun.

A gun found in a stolen car was used to kill a Tarpon Springs police officer in 2014. Others were used against other kids in other stolen cars.

As Florida lists vehicle theft as a property crime, the punishment — assuming they survive the “dash” — amounts to a $300 fine. For one 17-year-old perp, the frizzy hair in her mug shot was the low point of her brief arrest.

Social standing among a peer group counts for much of the motivation. Fueled by social media posts, the majority of the thefts are simply the county’s bored kids making a game of it on Facebook and Instagram. Using social media connections as a trail of breadcrumbs, police discovered that 57 percent of the county’s underage car thieves all belong to the same loosely connected online peer group.

Basically, kids that steal cars are friends with kids who steal cars.

Naturally, there’s competing theories as to the underlying cause — a laid-back Florida attitude, boredom, absentee parents, or simply a lack of money among many youth are all possible motivators. Law forbids police officers from pursuing drivers who pose a greater risk to the public if chased, so suspected perpetrators of property crimes — such as auto theft — find it easy to make a getaway.

“For somebody to have to stand idly by and watch a juvenile drive around in circles at 100 miles per hour, waiting for him to kill a kid and then take the blame for it when he kills a kid because they didn’t do anything,” said Clearwater Police Chief Daniel Slaughter, “that’s not a fun day.

Should one of the teens find themselves in the arms of the law, state law dictates they’ll only spend a maximum of 21 days in juvenile detention before seeing their day in court. During that time, wholesome meals are served three times a day. There’s also plenty of networking.

One 17-year-old offender called the experience “day care,” adding that it’s the norm to exchange phone numbers with other car thieves. A large slice of the arrestees end up as repeat offenders, sometimes seeing the inside of the detention center a half dozen times.

For now, all that police, the judicial community and motorists can do — aside from locking their car doors — is throw up their hands in frustration, as there’s no sign of the trend ending anytime soon.

[Image: fourbyfourblazer/ Flickr ( CC BY 2.0)]