White Settlement police say they caught catalytic converter thief in the act. Most get away

White Settlement police achieved a rare feat Wednesday morning when they arrested a suspected catalytic converter thief as he was committing his crime.

Two officers were filling their vehicles with gas at the White Settlement ISD fuel barn around 4:20 a.m. when one heard what he described as a “drill you’d hear at a construction site,” police chief Christopher Cook said at a press conference Wednesday.

The pair opted to investigate and found a man running from a jacked up vehicle near the 8100 block of Downe Drive.

The vehicle’s catalytic converter had been partially detached from the exhaust pipe, and police found a drill and other tools used to steal the auto part.

Police charged the man with felony theft of precious metals and evading arrest, Cook said. He was also wanted on a Tarrant County warrant for what Cook described as family violence.

The number of catalytic converter thefts nearly quadrupled nationally between 2019 and 2020, according to a March 2021 report from the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

Catalytic converters easy to steal and contain precious metals that can fetch anywhere from $1,000 to $14,000 per ounce on the open market.

Converters are used to clean a vehicle’s exhaust before it is released into the atmosphere. They can be cut off a car or truck in one to three minutes.

White Settlement police get reports of catalytic converter thefts about twice a week, and those crimes are rarely ever solved, Cook said.

Police have had some success catching thieves trying to sell stolen parts to junkyards, but Cook, who previously served as a deputy police chief in Arlington, said that agency’s catalytic converter theft task force discovered some thieves are shipping stolen parts as far away as Michigan.

Police in Bedford have offered residents etching kits that can be used to write identifying information like a VIN number on a catalytic converter. These can help police match the stolen part to your vehicle, but does little to help prevent theft in the first place, Cook said.

Educating the public on what kinds of vehicles are getting targeted could help prevent theft, Fort Worth police detective Erik Lavigne told the City Council in October 2021. He mentioned the Toyota Tundra, Toyota Prius, Honda Element and Ford F-250 as a few of the models cars targeted by thieves.

Trucks with a high clearance are an easy target because thieves can slip under the vehicle and cut off the converter without having to jack it off the ground.

Priuses and other fuel efficient cars are also popular targets because there catalytic converters have higher quantities of the precious metals that make the part valuable.

Information from Wednesday’s arrest will be shared with police agencies across North Texas, which can help them solve outstanding theft cases in their own communities, Cook said.