Baltimore County and Baltimore City police will form a special task force next month to battle a highly mobile and successful gang of juvenile car thieves that has been targeting the Green Spring Valley, Owings Mills and Towson areas since late spring.
The gang is made up of 10 to 15 homeless teen-agers who steal cars and conduct quick-strike shoplifting sprees to survive, according to Detective Sgt. Robert Jagoe of the county Auto Theft Unit.
"They say they don't have parents, have no real roots and tend to live on the lam," Sergeant Jagoe said. "They sleep wherever they lay their heads . . . they are tearing us up."
Through interviews with suspects and from other intelligence, city and county police have constructed a picture of a gang of youths from various Baltimore neighborhoods who generally use the Walbrook Junction area as a base of operations. The youths steal cars in the county and often dump them in Southwest Baltimore.
"There is a city-county connection and we will be working together to solve this problem," said Sam Ringgold, a city police spokesman. "The bulk of the auto theft problem is juveniles. Sometimes they will go out and steal two or three cars a night."
County police thought they had made some progress during the summer when they arrested the gang's leaders, ages 15 and 16. But the youths escaped from the Charles H. Hickey School in Cub Hill shortly after they arrived.
Three gang members were arrested Sunday after a wild chase that began when a county police officer spotted five stolen vehicles on the Baltimore Beltway, authorities said.
When the officer gave chase, the cars scattered in different directions. One of the drivers tried to run down a state trooper who had pulled the car over on Reisterstown Road in Owings Mills, then led officers on a chase to Melrose in Carroll County, where the stolen car twice rammed a state police cruiser before overturning. A 13-year-old and a 14-year-old were arrested.
A 15-year-old driver was apprehended after he rammed a county police cruiser with another stolen car in Woodlawn, police said. Later, police said, one of the young suspects boasted that he had personally stolen 50 vehicles this year.
"This is a very dangerous group," Sergeant Jagoe said. "This is not a kiddie crime. We have recovered a loaded shotgun from one of their cars in the past. They have robbed their victims before they stole their cars, and they obviously have no fear to ram police cars or attempt to run over officers. They don't give up without a fight."
On Friday, county police arrested two city youths for driving cars stolen in Greenspring Avenue neighborhoods and searched for a third suspect. They could not say whether those juveniles were members of the gang or whether the Sunday and Friday incidents are related.
Sergeant Jagoe said members of the gang have started prowling residential areas during the early-morning hours this winter. With four or five youths in a vehicle, often stolen the previous day, they will go through a neighborhood between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., searching for cars warming up in driveways or at curbside.
"That way, a lot of the risk is removed for them," Sergeant Jagoe said. "In the summer and fall, they were breaking into cars, pulling ignitions and turning the switch with a screwdriver to start the engine. They can get into a vehicle and start it in a minute, minute and a half."
"They are going after high-dollar cars, Acuras and Lincolns," the sergeant said. "Sometimes they will cut them up or sell the electronic parts like the radio, car seats, windows. Other times, it is a joy ride affair."
Sometimes gang members steal a van with a sliding side door for shoplifting raids.
"They will do a mass shoplifting trip with a mini-van," Sergeant Jagoe said. "One or two of the gang members will work a store and steal, say, clothes, and their partner will zoom up to the store entrance, van door wide open, and the guys with the merchandise will dive into the van and away they go."
The sergeant said the Garrison and Towson precincts of Baltimore County have been hardest hit this year by car thieves, and the juvenile gang may be responsible for a majority of those thefts.
Through Oct. 31 -- the latest date for which statistics are available -- more than 5,500 vehicles have been stolen countywide. In the Garrison precinct, which covers affluent sections of Owings Mills and the Green Spring Valley, nearly 1,200 vehicles were stolen -- 22 percent of the county's total. In the Towson precinct, more than 800 vehicles were stolen during the same period.