Hartford police taskforce finds suspected tire thieves

HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) – Hartford police formed a taskforce to identify the members of a tire theft crime ring targeting cars in the city this year.

“Not everyone is going to jack up a car and take wheels off, this is kind of a special, handful of people who are doing this,” Sgt. Chris Mastroianni, a spokesperson for the Hartford Police Intelligence Division, said.

According to Mastroianni, a crime ring has been targeting cars all over the city, stealing tires and rims to resell them for a profit.

“It does happen, most of the time, in the middle of the night, 3, 4 in the morning, a lot of times happening in parking lots, driveway,” he said.

Three weeks ago, the Hartford’s police chief initiated a task force made up detectives, community service officers and the C4 Real Time Crime Center to identify suspects.

“With the city cameras, we were starting to get some solvability around these, starting to see the same car and the same people at many of these scenes,” Mastroianni said. “That’s when we knew we had a more organized crew together that was working.”

Police arrested caught two suspects as they stole four tires off a car Monday, according to officers. Officers also seized two cars and evidence connected to tire and rim thefts.

Police have arrest warrants out for more suspects. In the meantime, the advice for drivers is to install wheel locks and store the key in a wallet instead of a glovebox.

“Within two, three minutes we’ve seen them jacking up a car and getting the wheels off so wheel locks can be a potential deterrent because they’re not going to want to spend the time to that wheellock off,” he said.

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