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Watertown Police try new method to curb Prius catalytic-converter thefts
By adamg on Wed, 11/09/2022 - 3:43pm
Watertown News reports Watertown Police, a local Toyota dealer and a sign painter have teamed up on a free program to spray paint "Property of Watertown Police" on the catalytic converters of older Priuses - which are particularly popular with thieves - in the hopes that will make the expensive devices harder for thieves to resell.
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Comments
To Priuse and Serve.
To Priuse and Serve.
Wait...
Marking on personal property that it belongs to the cops. What could go wrong?
What happens...
if you need to sell your own catalytic converter? Seems like marking it as your own property would be a smarter move.
Is that a thing?
Do folks actually sell their own converters??
You might sell your wrecked car to a junkyard
and if part of the car says it's the property of a police department, the junkyard may not want to accept it.
If you need a new one, yeah
Gotta do something with the old one, and it's one of the few auto parts that are worth anything as scrap.
Really?
Really?
Have car manufacturers succeeded in making their parts so unique, so specific to their cars (and making their cars absolutely need proprietary parts) that there is no wider market for cheap (stolen) parts and no way for repair shops to use anything but proprietary parts?
I'm asking that as a serious question. I could easily believe they make them more specific, proprietary-matching, but...
I remember an insurance company demonstration when I was commuting (a couple of decades ago, so I agree tech might have changed some things). Insurance company paid a couple of ex-cons to do the demo - took a $4000 used car and stripped it down to ~$9000-$10000 worth of parts.
Sign in window
Remember in the old days when car radios would get stolen and as a deterrent people would put a sign in their window saying the radio was not in the car? A sign saying the VIN is etched onto the cat (true or not) can have the same deterrence effect. The sign is important, because if the thief only sees the etched VIN after he's cut it out, you are SOL. The VIN on the cat makes it harder to sell to a buyer, so letting the thief know the VIN is on the cat before he cuts is crucial.
No etching my cat
If I tried to etch my cat I'd get bitten and clawed.
Honest question...
How hard would it be to remove spray paint from one of these??
Like 5 minutes
with a wire wheel grinder.
Sounds like a clever ruse
to allow the police to steal the catalytic converters for themselves. :-P
Yes,
I'm sure those upstanding garages that are buying used catalytic converters would find it morally reprehensible to remove some paint before installing them.
They aren't installing them
They're stripping the precious metals out, and selling that. But yeah, paint isn't going to slow them down.
ignoring the reason
ignoring the reason converters are being stolen - these parts don't fail SO OFTEN that there's such a huge demand that illegal parts must be obtained. converters are stolen and stripped because rhodium, which there is a very small piece inside, has a black market price of like 1000$ a gram.