As car thieves grow emboldened, leading to a wave of stolen autos across North Jersey, some crooks have taken to leaving the cars but pilfering an often-overlooked part, which can be worth thousands at metal scrap yards and cost as much for the victims to replace.

Thefts of catalytic converters have risen dramatically over the past couple of years across the U.S., according to the Pew Charitable Trusts, all due to valuable metals like platinum, palladium and rhodium that are used to manufacture the small, honeycomb-shaped objects that filter harmful pollutants from your vehicle's exhaust.

But Fair Lawn police, hoping to deter would-be thieves, are looking to launch a pilot program that will stamp a driver's catalytic converter with a registered serial number, similar to a car's VIN, and help them trace the stolen part back to its owner.

"It’s very difficult to prevent this kind of theft," said Sgt. Brian Metzler of the Fair Lawn Police Department. "You can lock up your vehicle and they can still climb under it and cut these things out."

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Although the program will take some time to catch on, Metzler hopes that once thieves become aware of the new measure, they will stop taking converters if they know they are more difficult to sell, as scrap yards may begin to check the converters they are given and reject any emblazoned with a number that will be registered in a department database.

"We’re going to let the scrap yards know this is what we’re doing, and, ‘Hey, just so you know, if you get caught with this product that you bought from somebody, and it has our code etched into it, you can be responsible for holding on to stolen merchandise,’ “ Metzler said.

At the moment, Fair Lawn has not decided whether it will institute the program, but instead it is waiting to see how many residents will participate, hoping for a launch in the fall.

Fair Lawn residents can sign up to have their catalytic converter etched by registering for the potential program at fairlawnpd.com/register.

Reported thefts of the valuable exhaust filters rose nationwide by nearly 300% from mid-2020 to mid-2021, Pew reported.

Statewide statistics are more difficult to come by, as the New Jersey State Police lump catalytic converter thefts in with general property theft statistics.

Locally, Fair Lawn had reports of 11 converters stolen in 2021 and is on track to surpass that number with nine stolen as of August 2022, though the department's Capt. Joseph Dawicki said those numbers reflect discrete incidents in which more than one converter may have been cut out of a single vehicle.

In other municipalities across North Jersey, police are wrestling with even sharper increases.

Capt. Michael Antista from Hackensack said his department logged about 36 vehicles whose catalytic converters were stolen in 2021, but has already surpassed that number with 41 incidents so far this year.

Meanwhile, in Passaic, the numbers are higher, with 110 reported thefts in 2021 and 99 thefts year-to-date in the city.

"If it hadn’t been such a sudden thing, we wouldn’t have started tracking it as its own category of theft," said Passaic Deputy Police Chief Jonathan Schaer.

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As the value of the parts skyrockets, so does a department's inability to control the wave. Schaer said that when his city was able to nab a crew responsible for a rash of thefts, more thieves took their place: "It's whack-a-mole."

Catalytic converters are not worth much in and of themselves, but they are manufactured using platinum, palladium and rhodium, three metals that have swelled in value in recent years due to a multitude of circumstances, including increased demand for electric vehicles, which use the metals in their batteries; supply chain issues during the COVID-19 pandemic; and Russia's war in Ukraine, a region that exports a significant quantity of precious metals, said Jim Wyckoff, a senior analyst at Kitco, a global metals dealer that tracks valuations.

In February 2021, platinum futures reached a seven-year high of $1,348.20 per ounce, Wyckoff said. Palladium hit a record high of $3,028 per ounce in March.

Not only does that mean big business for crafty crooks, but on the other end, drivers who have had their catalytic converters stolen can face costs of $1,000 to $4,000 for replacements.

The metals have always been expensive due to their strength, said Will Guzman, a supervisor at United Scrap Iron & Metal Co. in Passaic.

"We don’t buy any of those," he said, referring to platinum, palladium and rhodium. "Those have to be tested for purity. It takes a long time, and the machinery is expensive."

But their sharp increase in value has created a perfect storm of a coveted item that is all-too-easy to steal.

"Thieves are aware of it, [and] they’re able to do it quickly," said Capt. Gary Peters of the Bloomfield police.

Crawl under a high-mounted vehicle, like an SUV or van, with a battery-powered saw and you're off in a couple of minutes, said Wyckoff.

Adding to law enforcement's troubles, once the metals are sold to a scrap yard, they're melted down, effectively dashing what little hope there was for investigators to track down the missing parts, said Antista, of Hackensack.

Hence, Fair Lawn hopes the etchings could present a new complication for the simple grift. The numbers are applied using a kit purchased from Vehicle Road Safety Solutions, which imports the packages. Each kit costs $21.99, according to the company's CEO, Reg Phillips. However, Fair Lawn will receive a government discount on each unit and offer the service for free.

Dawicki said an overall cost to the borough cannot be estimated until the department knows how many residents will take part in the program.

If it launches, Fair Lawn will be the first department in New Jersey to use the anti-theft tool, but similar programs are already underway in New York City and the state of Colorado, Phillips said.

While Colorado has high hopes for the program, Robert Force, director of the state's auto theft prevention authority, says its efficacy has been difficult to quantify since its April 2021 debut.

There were 189 catalytic converters reported stolen across Colorado in 2019. The following year, that number jumped to 1,053. Then, thefts skyrocketed in 2021, with 9,811 incidents reported. However, Force said just 23 converters that were etched and registered were among those taken, and anecdotally, he knows of at least four bearing the code that were recovered.

He acknowledged that's merely a drop in the bucket when considering the magnitude of the problem, but added, "The reality is, none of those would have been recovered without the sticker."

Furthermore, there are 6.5 million registered vehicles in Colorado, and so far, the program has issued only about 10,000 of the registered identifiers. He's optimistic it will eventually make a difference, but said the program is still too new for the numbers to reflect what can be achieved.