St Petersburg Police Celebrate Decrease in Auto Theft

From St.Petersburg Police Department: Our auto theft numbers in St. Petersburg decreased significantly from the first of the year. Chief Holloway will be available for interviews between 9:30-10:30a.m. today, for any media interested in speaking to him.

Please contact the Community Awareness Office 893-7550. After the first quarter, auto theft was up 16.2% over the same period last year. The latest numbers for the third quarter show we are now down 1.1% compared to the same period last year, and 17.4% under the five-year average. Chief of Police Anthony Holloway attributes the positive trend to a modern multi-pronged approach initiated over the last 18 months, including:

• H.O.M.E - (Habitual Offender Monitoring Enforcement) unit focused on repeat juvenile offender monitoring.
• Using the larger Property Crimes Unit to handle auto theft and increase arrests
• Violent Crime Task Force - greater cooperation with the Pinellas Sheriff's Office and other agencies
• ISU (Investigative Support Unit) -focusing on youth gang crime
• Social Media to raise public awareness and encourage residents to lock their cars
• Weekly in depth analysis of auto theft data trends

"Thanks to the hard work of the personnel assigned to these units, and the efforts of the citizens to secure their vehicles properly and consistently (i.e. not leaving their cars running and removing their keys including spare keys and key fobs), we can continue to expect to see a decrease in the number of auto thefts in our City," said Chief Holloway.

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