PORT ARTHUR, Texas — Catalytic converter thefts continue to plague Southeast Texas. Thieves stole the converters off two Port Arthur church vans Thursday, Aug. 12, 2021, Jessica Robbins, Port Arthur's Life Church pastor, said.
Members of the church did not realize the catalytic converters had been stolen until they went to turn on the vans the next morning and heard a hideous noise, Robbins said. She estimates each van will cost $750 to fix.
Catalytic converter thefts have been on the rise in Southeast Texas, Beaumont Police Department Detective Chad Andreu said.
"The deal with these catalytic converters is the materials that are inside of them," Andreu said. "We get calls everyday from surrounding areas dealing with the same problems. The precious metals is what we call them. They have the rhodium, the platinum and basically palladium, very expensive metals."
Thieves love catalytic converters because they are easy to steal and valuable, Andreu said.
“Rhodium is $18,900 an ounce," he said. "Palladium is $2,400 an ounce, and platinum is about $1,000 an ounce."
These crimes are being committed around the clock, and once the converters are gone, they are hard to track.
"These converters have no types of numbers that would relate it back to the vehicle," Andreu said.
Police said the criminals involved are often from outside our area and from places like Houston and Louisiana. Because of this, police are re-thinking their strategy to stop the thieves in their tracks and plans are in the works for a joint operation to tackle this issue.
"We're working in conjunction with Houston PD, their auto theft task force as well," he said. "We're gonna have an operation soon to try to combat some of this stuff right now."
In the meantime, Andreu said there are preventative steps the community can take to prevent them from falling victim.
"Try to get them to engrave the last six digits or the whole VIN on the catalytic converter," he said. "We can trace that. We can track that."
Toyotas, along with vans, trucks and other vehicles that sit high off the ground are targeted the most by catalytic converter thieves, Andreu said.