Wheels Off

Earlier this spring, Matan Horenstein and Ben Rotter bought a brand-new Toyota RAV4. They got special locks for the wheels to deter thieves.

It didn’t work. On April 15, Rotter, who is a doctor, drove back to the Heights after an evening shift at an ER in Bronxville. Parking was scarce, but around 11:30 p.m. he found a spot on Cabrini Boulevard.

Later that night, someone smashed one of the car’s windows, entered the vehicle, and found the key for the wheel locks. Thieves jacked up the SUV, took off the wheels, and left the vehicle propped on milk crates.

Police visited the couple's apartment building the next day to share the bad news. “My initial thought was, ‘How can this continue to happen?’” Horenstein said. “Like, how are we not doing anything?”

The Market

Auto-part thefts like this are epidemic on a handful of blocks in the neighborhood. Drivers can end up with four-figure repair bills, hoping that insurance will cover at least some of it.   

A lot of the crimes are happening along the short stretch of Cabrini Boulevard near Javits playground and the Cabrini Shrine. Lighting there is dim at night. There also aren’t any residential buildings or visible cameras.

I’ve personally seen, or seen photos of, five vehicles that lost their wheels there since the beginning of March.

Some of the wheels likely end up on the secondhand market. Online sellers sometimes list sets of lightly used RAV4 wheels, for example, for more than $1,000.

Catalytic converters are another common target. They’re found on the underside of cars and contain precious metals, including a few grams of palladium (currently valued at around $50 per gram) and platinum (around $64 per gram).

Christopher Taveras, an officer with the community-affairs section of the 34th Precinct, told me that stolen catalytic converters can fetch around $800.

Court records offer a glimpse into what the catalytic-converter black market might look like. In one 2022 indictment, federal prosecutors described the supply chain: cutters steal the catalytic converters and sell them to middlemen, who supply them to core buyers, who repackage and ship the parts to industrial recycling plants — some of them overseas — that extract their precious metals. (The indictment alleges that some of the defendants posted current prices for different catalytic converters online, helping cutters pick which kinds of cars to target.)

Some economics research suggests that theft rates closely track market prices for precious metals. 

An employee of one Upper Manhattan auto-repair shop, who declined to give his name, told me that last year he saw a surge of people coming in with vehicles that had lost their catalytic converters — around five per week at the peak, he said. But there have been fewer cases recently, he said.

The shop also fixes cars with stolen airbags — mostly nabbed from Hondas, he said — and, occasionally, missing wheels.

"Right Around the Corner"

 Car skeptics have long complained that free street parking is, in effect, a lavish giveaway to NYC car owners, who get around 160 square feet of public space to store their personal property. People in that camp might question whether cracking down on auto-parts theft is the best use of limited public resources. 

Others may wonder why a dense city that spends more than $6 billion per year on policing can’t prevent recurring larceny on a quiet block. 

People in the neighborhood have stories.

A private security guard told me that he once witnessed four people in ski masks pull off a wheel theft along Cabrini, around midnight. “It was so quick,” he said. He called the police, but it was too late. “They’re expert in what they’re doing,” he added.

Peggy Oleynick drove to Washington Heights from her home outside Philadelphia last fall to visit her son, daughter-in-law, and new grandson. She immediately found a parking spot: “right around the corner, this parking place. I cannot believe my luck,” she told me.

The spot was on Cabrini. Before long, her Honda CR-V was up on milk crates. Oleynick was able to pay someone to come and put on new wheels right there on the street. “This is inconvenient,” she thought. “But thank God I have the supports in place that I need. And not everybody does.”

Matt Phenix told me that he came home from a trip to London to find a note on his car, which was parked on Pinehurst. A neighbor reported scaring away men who were trying to saw off the catalytic converter. They didn’t succeed, but the saw badly damaged the underside of the car. “I understand that people need money, but let me tell you this, the car that they drove off in was a black Mercedes,” Phenix said.

One neighborhood car owner shared an insurance document with me showing more than $3,000 in repairs after the catalytic converter was stolen from the bottom of his Toyota Prius. The same car, he said, had its previous catalytic converter stolen just months earlier, under a previous owner.  

Nechoma Moss’s 2009 Honda Odyssey lost its wheels on Cabrini in 2023. “I’m disabled and really rely on our car,” Moss said, adding that most of the subway system isn’t accessible. She and her wife felt blamed in their interactions with the police. “Basically, we were told that it was our fault for parking there,” she said.

“It seems," Moss said, "like nothing's being done about the problem.”

The Police

I brought these issues up with Taveras, the community-affairs officer with the 34th Precinct. “We’re absolutely taking it seriously,” he said. Officers patrol that area at night, he said, including in unmarked vehicles.

But he acknowledged that those steps haven’t stopped thefts. They happen quickly: The precinct has seen videos of people stripping a vehicle of its tires in under two minutes, Taveras said, “NASCAR-style.” He also noted that the block doesn't have cameras.

Can’t the NYPD put NYPD cameras on Cabrini? Taveras said that camera programs require cooperation from people outside of the police force, like a lawmaker helping to secure funding.

He suggested that car-owners should invest in alarm systems and wheel locks — even if they’re not foolproof — and get identifying information etched on their rims and catalytic converters, which can make it harder to fence stolen goods. (The NYPD periodically holds events offering free etching.)

“Hondas and Toyotas get hit the most,” he said.

Some lawmakers are eyeing bigger remedies. In California, dealers are now required to etch vehicle identification numbers onto catalytic converters. Similar legislation in New York is currently sitting before a committee in the State Assembly.

As of Thursday evening, Horenstein and Rotter’s Toyota was still in the shop. The costs, according to documents he shared with me, total more than $6,500, although insurance covered most of it. “It’s officially been in the shop longer than we’ve owned it,” Horenstein said.