Some 2,500 cars and trucks were reported stolen in Denver during the first half of 2020. Only two years later, the number of reported vehicle thefts in the city for that same period was nearly 6,000. You read that right — nearly two and a half times as many, according to local law enforcement’s Colorado Metropolitan Auto Task Force.

The numbers are alarming and depressing, but they’re still just numbers until you consider the real-world impact on auto theft’s victims. Like Metro Caring, the Denver anti-hunger nonprofit that lost one of its food-collection trucks to auto theft earlier this month. Police recovered the vehicle, but it won’t be picking up food donations for the poor anymore.

“It’s basically totaled, and we can’t use it,” a Metro Caring staffer told Denver’s Channel 7.

Maybe it just goes with the territory these days, given our entire state’s dubious distinction as the No. 1 state for auto theft in the nation. Colorado has the highest rate of stolen vehicles per capita, and the raw numbers have been soaring. Nearly 22,000 vehicles were reported stolen statewide the first half of this year — easily on track to beat last year’s statewide total for the whole year of about 37,000 auto thefts.

And as Metro Caring’s loss reminds us, the crime of auto theft isn’t just about abstract, if embarrassing statistics. Its true toll becomes clear in the light of its flesh-and-blood impact on the community.

Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen underscored that point recently when he sat down for a discussion with The Gazette’s newsroom leadership.

“When I speak to community groups and I ask if they’ve had their car stolen, (or) if they know somebody who’s had their car stolen, you just see arms going up… (and people) saying, ‘Well, I’ve had my car stolen twice.’” Pazen said. “This is not OK.”

Auto theft also is symptomatic of even more serious crimes in which stolen vehicles play a role. They’re the object of violent car-jackings; they’re the getaway vehicles in liquor store robberies; they’re a source of quick cash to sustain drug addictions.

Stolen cars also provide a revenue stream for criminal enterprises. Like the 11 people indicted by a Denver grand jury in May in connection with an auto theft ring that stole more than $3 million in vehicles and other property across the metro area. Prosecutors said the defendants stole guns, trailers and at least 130 vehicles. The crime ring also allegedly stole identities to finance methamphetamine, heroin and fentanyl addictions. 

Pazen and others have blamed the explosion in auto thefts in part on a 2014 law that watered down penalties for motor vehicle theft — inevitably followed by a surge in auto thefts the very next year. The 2014 measure downgraded auto theft to a lower-level felony for vehicles under $20,000 in value.

It was another absurd swipe at law and order by a soft-on-crime legislature bent on “justice reform” — at the expense of crime’s victims. And they are indeed victims, not just crime stats.

It’s called auto theft, but it’s often enough a lot worse than losing a car. What’s really being stolen is our community’s security.