Colorado’s auto theft reckoning: A crisis we built, a crisis we can fix
By RMV Editorial Board
Colorado didn’t become the nation’s auto theft capital by accident. It got there through a decade of choices that treated working families’ cars like disposable assets. Lawmakers downgraded the theft of “low-value” vehicles to a low-level offense and sold it as reform. They never explained the part where families would carry the cost.
Criminals understood the message right away. If the state didn’t take these thefts seriously, why would the offenders?
The surge pushed Colorado to No. 1 in auto theft back in 2021 and we didn’t fall far—No. 2 in 2023 and No. 4 in 2024—as neighborhoods kept paying the price in lost time and tighter budgets.
State Patrol signals a shift
What says more than any statistic is what the state is doing now. In a recent sta...

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