Buyers who purchase catalytic converters in the City of Aurora will be required to report those sales to an online database as city leaders make an effort to deter people from stealing the car parts.

A bill passed on Monday establishes catalytic converters valued at $30 or more as secondhand property under city code. The ordinance says buyers must be licensed as a secondhand dealer and record the sale in the Leads Online database. Leads online is a national reporting system for secondhand property often used by law enforcement.

Catalytic converters, which control a vehicle’s emissions, also contain precious metals such as platinum, palladium and rhodium. The bill sponsor Councilmember Curtis Gardner has said he wanted an enforceable way to deter catalytic converter thefts because they have been on the rise.

“Obviously catalytic converter theft is a big problem,” Gardner said during a September council meeting, adding that’s true across the country.

Gardner was absent from council’s Monday meeting. The bill received initial approval in September and was first presented at council committee meeting in August. As of mid-July, there were 384 reported catalytic converter thefts in the city for 2022, compared to 1,318 in Denver.

A spokeswoman for the Aurora Police Department said they did not have the number or reported catalytic converter thefts for the past five years readily available.

Reporting to the Leads system “allows law enforcement to view the item that was sold and who sold the item. This allows for analytics and investigatory leads into individuals selling the converters. It is also a deterrent to bad actors both on the buying and selling sides as the sales information will be reported,” city memos about the bill said.

A bill during the 2022 state legislative session required scrap buyers of catalytic converters to keep records of their purchases but did not require they report the information, city staff told council in September. Aurora’s new policy builds on that legislation and follows suit with a similar measure approved in Denver.

Councilmember Juan Marcano said last month he also had interest in preparing a similar plan and supported Gardner’s bill.

“It’s a really great policy,” Marcano said in September.