California is the nation's stolen car capital, according to an insurance industry report to be released Tuesday.
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Seven of the nation's Top 10 metropolitan areas with the highest auto theft rates for 2004 are in California. Five of those are in the Central Valley, the heart of the state's agriculture production and, increasingly, home to methamphetamine manufacturers and abusers, says William Ruzzamenti, director of the Central Valley High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program.

The Modesto metropolitan area tops the list for the second year in a row, says the National Insurance Crime Bureau, a non-profit fraud investigation service funded by insurance companies. The NICB analyzed data collected by the FBI for each of the nation's 336 metropolitan statistical areas.

Car theft dropped 2.6% nationally in 2004. The decrease comes after four years of rising auto theft figures, according to the NICB.

The group found that the number of vehicle thefts per 100,000 people increased in the Stockton-Lodi area of California, moving it into second place in 2004 from third in 2003.

Three other Central Valley communities dominate the NICB's 2004 Top 10: Sacramento in fifth place; Visalia-Tulare-Porterville in seventh place, up from 15th place in 2003; and Fresno in ninth place.

Elsewhere, Detroit dropped to 15th from 10th place, and Miami fell to 13th from 8th place in 2003.

Ruzzamenti says he does not have any data to prove the connection between methamphetamine and auto theft. But he says drug abuse fuels crime such as auto theft, and the high auto-theft rates are occurring in California communities where methamphetamine trafficking is prevalent. The High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas are designated by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"In all of the communities where there is a significant meth problem, there is a significant auto theft problem," Ruzzamenti says. Thieves "grab the most common and easy thing that they know: They steal cars."

California Highway Patrol Lt. Jeff Morris agrees. In modest-income, agricultural areas such as Modesto, thieves favor cars manufactured in the late 1980s and 1990s, says Morris, who heads the Stanislaus County Auto Theft Task Force.

In the Modesto area, he says, 94% of the cars are recovered - usually stripped of their stereos, wheels and whatever valuables were in the glove compartment.

"Most of them (car thieves) are not looking to take the car to a chop shop," Morris says. "They take the car around the corner, grab the change, take the stereo and the wheels and just let it go."

Morris says that the task force has had success using "bait" vehicles to catch car thieves, but the public needs to be more security-conscious about cars.

He says car thefts could be reduced significantly if people stopped leaving their keys in their cars and leaving their vehicles running while they make a quick stop at the store.

Morris says such habits are hard to break. "It's the small-town mentality," he says.

Another way to curb thefts is for motorists to install tracking devices, which emit a signal to police if a vehicle is stolen, the insurance bureau says.