WASHINGTON – Catalytic converter thefts in Washington have gone up tremendously in the last year.
District 19, Senator Jeff Wilson introduced Senate Bill 5495 to address this issue.
It’s intended to target catalytic converter thefts by not letting scrap dealers purchase catalytic converters for anyone other than commercial enterprises and vehicle owners.
“This is an obvious right in front of us issue that effects every corner of the state without predacious and we’ve seen an increase as I have stated before” Said Jeff Wilson, State Senator for the 19th Legislative District. “Just alone since last year over 1,300% increase of catalytic converter thefts.”
Most vehicle owners are at risk from something like this happening to them.
“The only people that seem to be exempt would be the all electric vehicle owners, the rest of the 7 million vehicles potentially have hundreds of thousands of vehicles that are required to have that converter on it” said Wilson.
But, the scrap recycling industry doesn’t necessarily agree that passing this bill would help prevent these thefts.
“The bill as presented to you doesn’t really change the record of keeping requirements that we already have” said Holly Chisa, Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries PNW Chapter. “What it does do however is pull in precious metal which then pulls in pawn shops and other entities that also purchase, pardon me, precious metal confusing the issue.”
What is making these converters so valuable?
“What they got is platinum, palatium and rhodium in ’em” said Adam Nedrow, Owner of Nedrow’s Complete Auto Repair and Auto Electric in Yakima. “They go from anywhere they can be a couple hundred dollars or they can go up to a couple thousand dollars.”
Who would be a main target for this?
“Toyotas, Lexus’s, like the Prius, four runners, Toyota’s got a pretty hard wiring on those” said Nedrow. “Europeans have a lot of them and also Hondas.”
It can take thieves as fast as 60 seconds to steal a converter off of a car, so the best thing to do is to park your car in some sort of well lit area, maybe have a camera facing your vehicle or you can get some sort of protection like a skid plate.
“So if someone where to come in and steal it they would have to take the plate down to get in there and by that time they have at least probably half an hour to an hour” said Nedrow.
Rising prices for precious metals is also a driving factor for why people are stealing catalytic converters, Senator Wilson’s bill will be considered during legislative session now through March.
