PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) – A stolen car mission through multiple agencies has resulted in dozens of arrests according to Portland Police.

Portland Police Lieutenant, Norman Staples, said that after combining data from two separate missions into one, they have found that almost half of the traffic stops recorded resulted in a stolen vehicle being recovered.

There were 38 stops made during the mission, and 20 stolen vehicles were recovered. This led to 33 warrants being served and 24 people taken into custody.

“When an officer is out patrolling, there are certain things they look for on the car, excluding the driver, that indicate to them more than likely the car was stolen,” Staples said.

Staples attributes the high success rate in large part to data-driven policing, which has officers look for specific factors about vehicles, known as “enrichment factors,” that would lead them to conclude the vehicle was stolen.

These factors include missing license plates and damage to the car.

This targeted approach is resulting in high success rates, according to Staples.

“Even for a police agency, if you go one in six or one in seven, those are outstanding numbers,” Staples said. “Any agency would love to have those kinds of numbers. We’re sitting at one in two and one in three which is astonishing. We’re totally surprised every day we’re coming and 50 percent of our stops are stolen vehicle stops.”

SEE ALSO: Grenades found at dump in Portland.

Community policing has been contributing to more stolen vehicles being recovered according to Staples.

Titan Crawford is the founder of PDX Stolen Cars, a crowdsourced Facebook Group. Crawford has been on seven stolen vehicle operations, including the most recent one.

“Every single one has been exciting and we’ve helped find stolen vehicles in each one,” Crawford said.

Crawford has reported that his team helped to recover a stolen Jeep that they’ve had their eyes on since July.

“It constantly had been on private property and a member of our group set out to find that Jeep,” said Crawford. “After an hour they did and it’s finally recovered.”

Portland Police said through the world of Stolen Vehicle Operations and an increase in prosecutions, reported vehicle thefts are trending down.

From March 2022 to March 2023, there has been a 28 percent decrease in the number of vehicle thefts reported to PPB. And a 38 percent decrease from January 2023 to August 2023.

SEE ALSO: 5 adults, 2 teens arrested; 3 cars towed in PPB street takeover mission.

In the 31 missions Portland Police have conducted in the past year, they have stopped over 1,000 vehicles and recovered 287 stolen cars.

According to Crawford, the community can also play a part in helping reduce the number of vehicle thefts.

“You can look out down your street and notice a car that shouldn’t be there with a broken window, a damaged ignition, you know that car is not supposed to be there, your instinct tells you that,” Crawford said. “What we allow you to do is have a forum to present that vehicle and match it up to the owner who has a missing vehicle.”

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