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May 22, 2023

Crackdown on catalytic converter theft is on state lawmakers’ agenda, but they disagree on how

Kailash Gosine left several customers’ vehicles parked outside his Newport News

Kailash Gosine left several customers’ vehicles parked outside his Newport News auto repair business the night thieves struck.

They came to his shop, Gosine's Auto Repair on Warwick Boulevard near Newport News Shipbuilding, and stripped catalytic converters out of four vehicles.

"Those things got platinum in it, and platinum is worth more than gold," the mechanic said, noting that the larcenies six months ago were the second time his shop has been targeted.

Catalytic converters, he said, can fetch $500 to $600 apiece on the black market. But Gosine, for his part, had to dish out about $1,500 to buy new converters for the four customers whose cars were targeted.

"I’ve got to eat that," Gosine said. "It's brutal, man."

Newport News Police figures show 14 catalytic converter thefts city-wide from 2016-19 — but more than 40 incidents in 2020 alone.

Complaints about the proliferation of this type of brazen thefts have reached state lawmakers, with the Virginia General Assembly considering legislation this year to crack down on such larcenies.

"This isn't a problem just in one part of the state or something," said Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, who has been working on the issue. "This is a problem all over Virginia and all over the country.

Catalytic converters are devices in a vehicle's exhaust system — typically accessible from underneath the vehicle — that convert toxic pollutants into less harmful substances. Once stripped from vehicles, Gosine said, thieves can sell the parts, and eventually components are melted down for their precious metals.

The National Insurance Crime Bureau said the number of catalytic converter thefts reported to insurance companies jumped from 3,389 in 2019 to 14,433 in 2020, according to the Associated Press.

Legislation approved by Virginia's Republican-controlled House of Delegates and the Democrat-controlled Senate would crack down on catalytic converter thefts in different ways, and the bills will need to be reconciled in a conference committee this week.

The House bill makes it a Class 6 felony — punishable by up to five years behind bars — to steal a catalytic converter, regardless of how much it is worth. The legislation, which passed 72-28 on Tuesday, the bill also makes it a Class 6 felony to cause $1,000 or more in damage to a car by removing parts.

The felony provision would be an exception to a 2020 state law that says thefts of anything valued at less than $1,000 are misdemeanors.

The Senate version of the bill — passed unanimously Feb. 10 — doesn't add a felony exception to state law, but instead goes after people helping the thieves. The bill makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail, to assist someone else in stealing a catalytic converter.

Both chambers’ bills separately require that scrap metal purchasers must keep records for two years to track the dealer's "diligent inquiry" into whether the seller "had a legal right" to sell the part.

Sen. Frank M. Ruff Jr., R-Mecklenburg County, sponsored the Senate bill, which originally would have made the crime a felony. He said strong measures are needed because of how easy it is to remove catalytic converters from cars. People can use battery-powered saws to crawl under the vehicles and cut them out.

"They are going in and taking a bunch at a time," Ruff said. "If they can figure out how to get into a location that has multiple cars, it only takes just a few minutes to cut one out of each vehicle."

Replacing catalytic converter can also be expensive. Lawmakers said repairs on the Toyota Prius, for example, can cost upwards of $4,000.

Because of national supply chain issues, Ruff said, such repairs can also take weeks. He cited a case in which several service trucks were hit on one local site, partially shutting the business down for a month.

"It disrupts lives," he said. "Whether it's a business that has to cut back on what it's doing, or whether it's you — and you don't have a way to get to work."

But Senate lawmakers were not convinced the crime should be made a felony offense and removed that provision from Ruff's bill.

Surovell, chairman of the criminal courts subcommittee that amended the bill in the Senate, said there's research showing it's the likelihood of getting caught — not whether a crime is a felony or misdemeanor — that deters criminal behavior.

"We weren't persuaded that making this a felony is necessarily going to cause fewer people to do it," he said.

Instead, Surovell said senators put a greater focus on punishing people who help others commit the crimes, such as by serving as lookouts.

"This type of theft typically requires multiple people to complete," Surovell said. Because there's no such thing in Virginia as a conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor, he said, new language was added to give criminal liability to the lookouts, too.

That language, adopted from a separate bill by Sen. Lionel Spruill, D-Chesapeake, makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor to "assist, aid or abet" someone else in catalytic converter thefts. Spruill said Chesapeake Police Chief Kelvin Wright asked him to file the bill to battle the growing problem in his city.

When the amended bill was sent to the GOP-controlled House of Delegates, lawmakers there reinstated Ruff's original language making catalytic converter theft a felony. The House passed that version, then sent it back to the Senate for final approval.

But senators rejected it on Friday a 34-5 vote.

But Surovell said there's enough concern among lawmakers to warrant doing something to crack down on the thefts. He said lawmakers will seek to work out the differences in the bills during a conference committee this week.

"Everybody agrees that it's a big and growing problem, and that we need to do something in the code to try to address it," he said.

Gosine, the Newport News auto mechanic, said he called the police about the thefts six months ago, but that no one was arrested in the crime. "They came out and took a report, and that's as far as it went," he said.

When told there was a move afoot in the legislature to make stealing catalytic converters a felony, Gosine said he fully backed that idea.

"They should prosecute their a–," he said. "I believe in that."

Peter Dujardin, 757-247-4749, [email protected]

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