Guns are a target for theft as Chicago car break-ins rise

Last August, 25-year-old Darius Walker was shot and killed in a mass shooting on the 1500 block of South Trumbull Avenue. Three others were also shot during the incident, including another man, woman and a 15-year-old boy, according to police records.

The stretch of Trumbull Avenue where the shooting happened is located in the city's North Lawndale community and is lined with older Chicago graystones.

The group was holding a memorial for another gun-violence victim who was fatally shot the day before, just one block over, according to a social media account that follows Chicago crime.

The gun recovered from the incident, a Taurus pistol, was reportedly stolen from a car on the same street the mass shooting occurred on - an hour earlier.

The gun theft was one of 700 guns stolen during roughly 35,000 car break-ins in 2023.

And Walker was one of eight Chicagoans killed with stolen guns last year.

CBS News Chicago has tracked a post-pandemic rise in car break-ins over the last three years. Parking garages in the Loop, entire streets in the South Loop, neighborhoods on the Southwest Side, and others have been repeatedly targeted by thieves smashing out windows, sometimes hitting a dozen or more cars at once.

Public safety officials have long bemoaned the flow of illegal guns coming into Chicago, but as legal gun ownership swelled during the pandemic, so too did the number of guns kept in vehicles.

The CBS News Data Team pored over 23 years of gun inventory data from the Chicago Police Department, and analyzed data of hundreds of subsequent crimes where guns were recovered. The results show how guns purchased by residents for protection are being used in robberies, carjackings and shootings - exacerbating the city's gun-violence problem.

At least one gun is stolen from a car every 9 minutes in the U.S., according to a recent report from Everytown for Gun Safety, a research group that advocates against gun violence.

"What we found is pretty distressing," said Sarah Burd-Sharps, the senior director of research at Everytown. Her team found that a decade ago, roughly a quarter of gun thefts were from cars. In 2022, more than half were.

"There was a huge spike in gun sales during the pandemic," Burd-Sharps said. "New gun owners who, because of the pandemic, weren't getting the kind of training that they need to remind them about what responsible gun ownership looks like."

Everytown analyzed FBI data of stolen property to paint a picture of the national gun-theft trend.

"It's triple what it was a decade ago... it's been going up pretty much every year, and there was especially a big spike during the pandemic," Burd-Sharps said."Chicago is not immune to what's been happening across the country."

Everytown's report looked at gun thefts in Illinois, but did not look at Chicago specifically - likely because the city did not give complete data to the FBI. CBS News Chicago and the CBS News Data Team obtained firearm thefts and recovery data from the Chicago Police Department through several public records requests.

The resulting data analysis showed 1,786 guns were reportedly stolen in Chicago last year, with 709 stolen from likely car break-ins based on the reported location descriptions, or 40% of gun thefts. Additionally, 103 guns were stolen after thieves stole the car with the owner's gun inside.

"The reason that it matters so much, and Chicago certainly knows this, is because every gun stolen from a car increases the chance it could be used in a violent crime. It goes from the legal market to the illegal market," said Burd-Sharps.

The data show another alarming trend: while residents presumably purchased guns for protection from a crime, many of those guns ended up getting stolen during a robbery or carjacking. Last year, 98 guns were stolen during a robbery and 21 were stolen during a carjacking.

A 2022 report shows how a victim was caught off guard during a robbery when two male suspects held up the victim with assault rifles.

Meanwhile, the car break-ins continue unabated.

In February, thieves targeted about 25 vehicles on a strip of Indiana Avenue in the South Loop, a neighborhood repeatedly targeted with car break-ins for the last three years.

Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd) and the Chicago Department of Transportation responded with plans that included increasing the brightness of street lamps and trimming trees.

"What are trees and lights going to do?" South Loop resident Meghann Jackson told CBS Chicago in February. "I think it's just performative action. I don't think the lights adding higher voltage will do anything. Why tear down trees?"

The incident highlights how often some locations have become repeat targets for car break-ins. A downtown pay-to-park garage on the 400 block of North State Street saw nearly 60 car break-ins last year alone, the most in the city, according to an analysis of police data. At least one gun was stolen from that location.

All kinds of property such as electronics, purses and clothing are stolen from cars, but some spots yield more guns than others.

The 2500 block of North Kedzie Boulevard in Logan Square saw nearly 50 car break-ins and one stolen gun, the parking lot of the CTA Pulaski Orange Line station on the Southwest Side saw nearly 40 break-ins and one gun stolen, and a River North parking lot on West Ontario Street saw more than 30 car break-ins - with eight guns stolen from the lot last year alone.

"Clearly, these guys know they can keep coming here and keep getting away with this," West Loop resident Prentice Brown said last June. "Because hey, no one's doing anything about it."

The windows of Brown's SUV were smashed out while it was parked at the public garage of Presidential Towers complex at 555 W. Madison St., where he lives.

He said nearly 10 cars, including his, were vandalized. It wasn't the first time his car was broken into.

Car break-ins are not new in Chicago, nor are car thefts for that matter. Stolen guns, however, have added a new twist.

The Chicago Police Department does not have a specific crime category for a car break-in. When property is stolen from a store, it's classified as a retail theft. If something is stolen from a car, it's often categorized as a theft occurring on a street or a parking lot.

If a car window was busted out, but no property was stolen, then the crime is categorized as criminal damage to a vehicle.

A spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department confirmed that cars that were broken into with window damage, but no property reported stolen, are categorized as criminal damage.

The CBS News Data Team requested data on thefts where a car VIN was listed in the report. Not all car thefts listed a VIN, and in many cases, multiple cars were broken into and listed under a single crime report. We used the most common locations associated with thefts involving a vehicle and combined them with non-domestic, car damage cases to offer a glimpse into the scope of Chicago car break-ins.

Incidents involving stolen guns were matched up with the results to figure out how many were stolen from cars.

The results show that car break-ins are at levels not seen in a decade, bouncing back from pandemic lows.

Of the 35,000 car break-ins, police made about 340 arrests, accounting for only 1% of car break-ins last year, according to an analysis of police data.

"We are seeing the same trends throughout the country. And I think we're really alarmed and scared," said Christian Heyne, chief officer of policy and programs at Brady United, a nonprofit that advocates against gun violence.

"When gun violence happens, we can't just ask who pulled the trigger. We have to ask, where did that gun come from?" Heyne continued. "And if we do those things in concert with one another, we can have a real tangible impact in the way that gun violence is happening here in America."

The trend of stolen weapons in the state is reflected in data obtained from the Illinois State Police. Those data showed the number of weapons stolen in the state increasing from 2,580 guns in 2016 to 5,163 in 2022.

The ISP would not give CBS Chicago 2023 gun-theft data, and reiterated that it had given out previous years' data by accident. The state data comes from a police database called LEADS, which has restrictions on disseminating information outside of law enforcement.

To understand the scope of gun ownership in Illinois, CBS News Chicago also requested the number of Illinois residents who were issued Firearm Owner IDs and Conceal and Carry License since 2010, including zip code and county-level data.

ISP denied that FOIA request, saying, "...the dissemination of LEADS information to non-law enforcement persons and entities is prohibited." That's despite the fact that the ISP posted similar, aggregated information on their website, but for a different time frame. CBS News Chicago filed an appeal with the Illinois Attorney General's Office, which upheld ISP's denial.

This means it's impossible for the public to examine how gun ownership has grown in the state, unless the ISP chooses to release it.

Instead, CBS News Chicago used aggregate statewide data on gun license applications, which were only available as far back as 2015 on the ISP website.

There is reason to believe that the state stolen gun data that was given was an undercount as a 2018 report by The Trace showed 4,745 guns stolen in Illinois in 2016, nearly double what the ISP data reported that year. The Trace report utilized federal crime data.

While most of Chicago's stolen guns are coming from cars, more than 200 guns were stolen in a burglary, and hundreds more were reported stolen in thefts from residences and businesses.

Utilizing data on stolen guns and data on guns recovered from crime scenes, the journey from one crime to another can be linked from weapon serial numbers.

Over the last 20 years, guns stolen in Chicago have wound up in at least 44 homicides, 125 batteries, 91 assaults and 78 robberies.

The number of crimes committed with stolen guns is likely higher as data includes only guns stolen in Chicago and only weapons recovered in an arrest.

A gun stolen from an apartment on the 5000 block of South Loomis Boulevard in December of 2014 was used in a shooting about a mile and a half away the following July on the 6000 block of South Paulina Street.

On August 19 of last year, a gun stolen from an Englewood apartment on the 5900 block of South Peoria Street was used in an armed robbery of a Walgreens in Andersonville two days later, according to police data. Police arrested a 19-year-old and a 17-year-old.

Stolen guns used to commit other crimes are why gun safety advocates like Kathleen Sances are calling for safe storage laws.

"It's the gun owner's responsibility to report it within 72 hours," Sances said. "And if the gun owner fails to do that a ticket is issued. So really not a lot of teeth."

Sances is the president and CEO of Gun Violence Prevention PAC and is trying to strengthen gun storage laws in Illinois. She said part of the problem involves the rules around reporting when a gun is stolen.

Her group is behind new proposed legislation aiming to tighten that reporting window, increase education and revoke the FOID cards of gun holders with multiple violations.

"If we can't trace the custody of the gun, we can't solve these homicides," Sances said.