262 Carjacked In Nashville in 2017: Police

NASHVILLE, TN -- Someone in Davidson County was carjacked an average of every 33 hours and 36 minutes in 2017, according to Metro Nashville Police Department statistics.

MNPD told Channel 4 there were 262 carjacking reports in Metro last year - a little more than five per week - with 56 in South Nashville and 50 in North Nashville.

The Z-Mart on Lafayette Street just south of downtown was the site of four carjackings alone.

The station produced a map showing each of the carjacking reports from last year.

Carjackings are on the rise in most major American cities with law enforcement and criminology experts attributing the increase to a number of factors.

The age of offenders is getting lower, a factor experts say is because carjackings are seen as relatively easy to pull off and because guns are becoming easier for young people to acquire. Also, vehicles stolen in carjackings are preferred by resellers over those stolen in the traditional smash-and-hotwire method because carjacked vehicles are typically undamaged and otherwise show little evidence they were acquired illegally.

Finally, the rise is due in part to an unintended consequence of anti-theft technology, of all things, according to experts. Proximity-sensing key fobs and other measures intended to hamstring auto thieves require the driver to be present to start the cars engine, leading thieves to prefer carjacking to other means of auto theft.

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