Catalytic Converters Taken Off Parked Vehicles in County

RISON - A growing crime that has so plagued many of the country's urban areas has now shown up in Cleveland County. Billy Wingard, who lives at the Cleveland-Jefferson County along Hwy. 63, informed the Herald that he had the catalytic converters taken off three cars that he had parked next to a shop building he owns on the highway. He said he only discovered that the parts had been stolen after hearing an unusual noise coming from the exhaust system after starting one of the vehicles. While theft of catalytic con-verters has been a growing problem in urban areas across the country over the past few years, Chief Deputy Gary Young of the Cleveland County Sheriff's Department said this was the first report he was aware of the theft of a catalytic converter being taken off a parked car in the county. A catalytic converter is a device installed on a vehicle's exhaust system that cleans the exhaust of toxic gases and pollutants. It is the precious metals used inside the converters that make the muffler-like devices the target of thieves. Removing a catalytic con-verter takes only minutes using some basic, readily available battery-operated tools from a local hardware store, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB). For the vehicle owner, it can costly due to the loss of work, finding and paying for alternate transportation, and then paying anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000 to get the car fixed. According to a NICB report, the increase in catalytic converter thefts has been dramatic. In 2018, there were 1,298 catalytic converter thefts for which an insurance claim was filed. In (continued from page 1) 2019, that number grew to 3,389, and in 2020, it jumped to 14,433, a 325 percent increase over a single year. While the NICB used only data from converter thefts that were turned into as insurance claims, the group said the actual number could be much higher since not all thefts were turned ...