The pattern is one Ramsey County sheriff’s deputies say they see over and over: Young people stealing vehicles begin with “crimes of opportunity” — taking vehicles left running or unlocked with the keys inside.
When that becomes easy, they progress to sneaking into people’s garages and kitchens to take key fobs and then vehicles.
Emboldened, the carjackings begin — pointing guns at people, sometimes assaulting them, and taking their keys and vehicles with force.
As carjackings have spiked in the Twin Cities, prosecutors, law enforcement and community leaders in St. Paul and Ramsey County are trying to interrupt young people from advancing from auto theft to carjacking. They say most of the people involved are teens, and it’s not usual for them to be too young to even have a driver’s license.
The new Ramsey County Youth Auto Theft Intervention Project is taking the approach used in Group Violence Intervention, also known as focused deterrence. The idea is that a relatively small number of people are involved in violence, and that stopping them can lead to increased safety for the individuals involved and the community as a whole.
“It’s not just about the enforcement, it’s also about trying to connect people to services if they’re willing,” said Ramsey County Attorney John Choi. “… We’re doing everything that we can to stem the tide of violence.”
Choi’s office applied for and received auto theft grants from the Minnesota Department of Commerce to coordinate prevention and enforcement efforts. They include funding for investigators at the Ramsey County sheriff’s office Carjacking and Auto Theft unit, which was formed in September, and a prosecutor who works on auto theft cases.
SPIKE IN CARJACKINGS
Carjacking used to be a rare enough occurrence in St. Paul that police didn’t track them apart from robberies or auto thefts. As the numbers increased, the department began keeping a separate tally. There were 55 carjackings reported in St. Paul in 2019, 73 in 2020 and 101 last year.
Meanwhile, there were 2,635 vehicles reported stolen in St. Paul last year — not in carjackings — slightly down from the 2,774 reported in 2020.
In Minneapolis, 617 carjackings or attempted carjackings were reported in 2021 as of mid-December, compared with 388 in 2020. Suburban communities, including Woodbury, Roseville, Edina and St. Louis Park, have also seen carjackings.
They’ve happened in neighborhoods throughout St. Paul, at various times of day and night.
Suspects are often seeking high-end vehicles and may follow people if they spot a vehicle they want to steal, said St. Paul Assistant Police Chief Robert Thomasser. “They’re using ambush tactics to surround people and prevent escape,” he said.
That’s what police believe occurred when a woman returned to her Summit Hill home shortly before 10 on a December morning.
A vehicle pulled behind her and the woman began to close her garage door, but three young people came into her garage. One pointed a gun at her. Someone grabbed her purse with her vehicle’s key. Her 2-year-old was still in the vehicle. She yelled at the males repeatedly, “Unlock the door!” because her vehicle’s back doors were locked.
When they did, she quickly unbuckled her daughter from her car seat and ran with her to safety.
The woman, who asked not to be identified, said she was focused on her daughter during the carjacking. As time went on, the realization of what happened — and that could it have been worse — sunk in.
Her husband, who’d been worried about carjacking before it happened to his family, said his wife is a hero for her calmness in getting their daughter out of the vehicle.
INJURIES AND DEATHS FROM CASES
Carjackings and auto thefts have left people injured and also resulted in deaths. A man was wounded when he was shot during an apparent attempted carjacking in South Minneapolis in December.
Also in December, when Robbinsdale officers tried to pull over a vehicle that had been reported stolen in a carjacking, police say the driver fled and crashed. There were five juveniles in the vehicle, two of whom died and the others were injured. In September, two passengers in a stolen vehicle — ages 14 and 15 — died when their friend crashed after a Ramsey County sheriff’s deputy tried to pull him over in Maplewood.
Even before those instances, many law enforcement agencies had tightened their pursuit policies, citing safety reasons. That’s something young people are aware of and they don’t hesitate to speed away from officers as a result, according to members of the Ramsey County sheriff’s office Carjacking and Auto Theft team.
Teens also don’t think they’ll face consequences, which “adds fuel to the wildfire of enabling this behavior,” said Deputy Kyle Williams, an investigator working on juvenile outreach. He said he’s asked young people after they fled from deputies in a stolen vehicle, “What are you doing out here?” and they’ve told him, “I’m bored and they just let us go anyway, so why not?”
About 40 percent of people charged with motor vehicle theft in Ramsey County in recent years were under age 25, according to information from the county attorney’s office. In 2019 and 2020, repeat juvenile auto theft offenders represented 37 percent of all juvenile auto thefts.
Research from the county attorney’s office also shows the more often a young person has been referred for prosecution, the younger they were when they were first referred.
“When young people are stopped in a vehicle under suspicious circumstances, either as drivers or passengers, often there is not enough evidence to charge them,” the county attorney’s office wrote in a grant application to the Commerce Department. “The criminal/juvenile justice systems do not have a way to address this behavior until it escalates to the point of warranting charges. This does not serve public safety, victims, or the healthy development of these young people.”
FOCUSED DETERRENCE APPROACH
Choi started a Violence Reduction Leadership Group in April, gathering elected officials with leaders of law enforcement and other agencies. A main focus has been carjackings and focused deterrence.
“We often experience different entities sort of pointing fingers at each other when our residents and our constituents expect us all to be working together to help create solutions that are greater than the sum of its parts,” said St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, who’s been part of the meetings and planning.
St. Paul and Ramsey County started looking at using Group Violence Intervention strategies for gun violence in 2018. The Ramsey County attorney’s office wrote a grant proposal, but ultimately didn’t submit it because they did not want to move forward without Carter on board.
Carter said he’s always been open to an approach like GVI and “wanted to make sure we were being thoughtful around it.” He said they’ve been “moving forward with a level of intentionality” that’s necessary for GVI.
It begins with trusted community members talking to those involved in violent behavior, giving them a message of, “We cannot tolerate this as a community and it absolutely has to stop,” said Louisa Aviles, who was until last month the National Network for Safe Communities’ director of Group Violence Intervention.
If they don’t stop, they’re on notice that the community is committed to “bringing swift, certain and fair consequences for violence,” often but not necessarily through the criminal justice system, she said.
Community leaders offer help with accessing services — getting food on the table, helping them stay safe in the short-term, addressing trauma they’ve experienced, along with mental health and chemical dependency treatment, job training and housing programs, Aviles said.
PLANS TO REACH OUT TO 60 TEENS
Communities have applied focused deterrence to crimes beyond gun violence. Aviles said she hasn’t yet seen it used as a way to address auto theft and carjackings, as what’s starting in Ramsey County. But she said there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work.
The Hallie Q. Brown Community Center received a federal grant last year that funds the work of the African American Leadership Council and St. Paul Black Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance on GVI-type approaches in St. Paul. They’ve hired two case managers and have begun working with young people involved in gun violence.
Now, they’re also part of the Ramsey County Youth Auto Theft Intervention Project — they’ve recently started reaching out to young people who are on the radar of law enforcement and prosecutors as being involved in auto thefts, carjackings or who’ve been found to be passengers in stolen vehicles, said Tyrone Terrill, African American Leadership Council president. There are about 60 and they’re currently all males, ranging from 12- to 17-years-old.
“We’re being real clear that … ‘We want to keep you alive and keep you from hurting somebody else,’ ” Terrill said. ” ‘You’re driving cars at 80, 90, 100 mph or more. How can we help you deter that energy and do something else?’ ”
The families they’ve talked to so far know their children are getting in trouble, and they’ve been arrested, but some are at their wits’ end and haven’t been able to stop their children from continuing to run off, Terrill said. They also want help with early intervention.Even before the focused deterrence work around auto thefts, an idea that came from the Violence Reduction Leadership Group started last summer. An “action team,” involving the St. Paul Community Ambassadors and Ramsey County Healing Streets, began reaching out to about two dozen young people and their families. They’ve been connecting them with resources and services, and providing ongoing support, with the goal of helping them stabilize their lives, creating more safety for them and the community, said County Manager Ryan O’Connor.
WHAT’S BEHIND CARJACKINGS?
The sheriff’s CAT team looks at each case on an individual basis, but their focus would be making an arrest for people involved in repeated armed carjackings and violent crimes.
“For every violent crime problem, you have to treat it with prevention, intervention and suppression,” Undersheriff Mike Martin said. “You try to get them out with early intervention as soon as they are involved, or more significant intervention if they’re involved more. And if that fails, you have to arrest them and hold them accountable, and then hope that they get the services that they need while they’re in custody.”
Cities around the U.S. have reported carjacking spikes. The potential reasons are varied, and the effects of social disconnection from schools and other activities during the coronavirus pandemic can’t be overlooked, said Stephanie Kollmann, policy director of the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago.
There may also be a shift from street robberies and hold-ups of businesses to carjackings, Kollmann said. Robbery reports were up in St. Paul from 542 in 2019 to 716 in 2020, and then fell to 511 last year.
Additionally, anti-theft technology in vehicles means they’re difficult to steal off a street, so people set on taking a vehicle may need to rob a person of the key fob to get the vehicle, Kollmann added.
JOYRIDING, USING VEHICLES FOR OTHER CRIMES
What’s the end game for carjackers? It’s not usually to sell the vehicle or strip it for parts, police say. The carjacked vehicles may be used to go steal another vehicle or rob a person, according to Thomasser.
Young people are joyriding in stolen vehicles, using social media to brag about carjacking and showing themselves speeding. “It’s like a game for them,” said Deputy Joe Kill, sheriff’s office CAT team lead investigator.
They taunt each other on social media, saying, “I just carjacked this Porsche. Where are you at? What kind of car are you driving?” said Deputy Thomas Segelstrom, a sheriff’s office investigator working with the county attorney’s office. “It’s all about clout.”
The CAT team — working in St. Paul, throughout Ramsey County and sometimes responding elsewhere in the metro area — arrested 50 juveniles and 12 adults for auto theft or carjacking between September and Jan. 18. The sheriff’s office recovered 112 stolen vehicles during that time.
They recently arrested two St. Paul teens, ages 18 and 19, who’ve been charged with a January carjacking spree that spanned 10 days across multiple counties and involved 27 victims.
DIFFICULT FOR VICTIMS TO ID SUSPECTS
Of the 101 carjackings in St. Paul last year, police referred 30 carjacking cases to the county attorney’s office for charging consideration, of which police had made arrests in 22. There was more than one person arrested in some cases.
Prosecutors filed charges in 20 of the 22 cases that ended with arrests — there is usually better evidence in such cases, according to the county attorney’s office.
It can be difficult for carjacking victims to identify suspects because they catch people by surprise, the crimes happen quickly and they are traumatizing, plus the robbers have been wearing COVID masks lately, Thomasser said.
When there is an increase in carjackings, police look at who has been released from the jail or the juvenile detention facility recently, which can point investigators to people with long records of auto thefts or carjackings, according to Thomasser.
“If there’s a fix to this, I would say that the entire criminal justice system needs to be working in the same direction and having the same goals of those who commit crimes in our city using a firearm are held accountable to the fullest extent of the law, but that’s not always the case,” Thomasser said.
The husband of the woman who was carjacked in St. Paul at the end of December said he thinks the system failed the three suspects, his family and the community at large.
Deputies from the CAT unit arrested three teens, ages 18, 17 and 14, in the case. The 18-year-old, Isaiah Charles Foster, was charged with the robbery of an 81-year-old a few days before the carjacking. The woman was yanked to the ground when her purse was stolen and she lost consciousness. Foster’s attorney, however, says there was a lack of probable cause to charge him.
According to juvenile records, Foster has been in trouble before. In 2020, he was charged with misdemeanor domestic assault, fifth-degree assault, domestic assault and fleeing a police officer, aggravated robbery as well as other crimes.
Hennepin County sent him to the Woodland Hills juvenile detention center in Duluth. Previous charges, except the aggravated robbery, escaping from custody and tampering with a motor vehicle, were dismissed. He was put on probation until Dec. 31, 2023. Last July, he was ordered to be sent to the West Central Regional Juvenile Center in Moorhead as soon as a bed was available.
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Can young auto thieves get help before becoming carjackers? Ramsey County tries new approach. - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press
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