Car thieves go to town on vehicles across area

BLACKTOWN City Council area had more than 600 car stolen last year, making it the car theft capital of NSW.

Blacktown is car theft capital, according to new data which shows more cars are stolen in the western Sydney suburb than any other.

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A VEHICLE is stolen almost every twelve hours on average in Blacktown, making it the car theft capital of NSW.

More than 664 cars were nicked in the Blacktown Council area in 2017, according to new statistics released by Finder.com.au.

That is 100 more cars than runner up Central Coast Council and 130 more than the Canterbury-Bankstown Council area.

The data has not surprised Blacktown police area command’s Detective Inspector Paul Tickner though, who said the command had reported about 700 car thefts each year since 2005-06.

“Yes, motor vehicle thefts are up, but they are not up drastically,” Det-Insp Tickner said. “This year we are projecting we are going to be pretty much the same as last year, and the financial year before that there was an increase of about 45 (thefts).

“Over the last seven or eight years it has flatlined.”

Detective Inspector Paul Tickner says they have reports of around 700 car thefts per year. Picture: Simon Bullard

While many people argue Blacktown usually tops the list simply because of its size, when compared to the latest Census data, it showed a different picture. Residents in the Central Coast - an area of almost the same size, but with about 9000 less people - reported to have more than 192,000 registered cars on the roads, while Blacktown had over 167,000 for crooks to pick from.

While in Canterbury-Bankstown, the area had almost 10,000 more residents at census time than Blacktown and still only sat third.

In other statistics released by Finder.com.au last month, it showed 10,037 cars were stolen in NSW overall last year.

That is one car stolen every 52 minutes.

Holden Commodores were the most popular to steal, with three models of Commodore in the top five targeted cars.

Toyota Hilux was the second most popular, with 345 thefts in 2017 alone.

As for motorbikes, 1673 were stolen statewide last year, a 13 per cent increase on the previous year.

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