MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Memphis Police reported 12,555 motor vehicle thefts last year, with nearly 10,000 the year before, and only around 1 in 10 of those cases are ever solved.

It’s an enormous number with a tremendous impact. Each car belonged to someone. Some of them shared their stories with News Channel 3.

Josi Jerrolds said she let her daughter, who lives in Midtown, borrow her car last February.

“She woke up the next day, and it was gone,” Jerrolds said. “The cops were calling me at the same time she was calling me. She was calling me to tell me it was stolen, and the [police] were like, ‘Do you know where your car is?'”

Police found it out of gas in the middle of Elvis Presley Boulevard. Jerrolds caught a ride there to find her car, and her life, now wrecked.

“It looked like they were doing donuts or something and hitting whatever they hit,” she said. “It devastated me and my finances.”

The single mother had the car 18 months and found out the loan was more than what the car was worth.

“I ended up with all the excess on that. Plus having to come up with a down payment for a car. Even now, I am behind on bills, because I have to take care of all that,” Jerrolds said. “I was Ubering when I didn’t have a rental car. Asking for rides. You couldn’t get groceries, because no one wanted to go and wait at the grocery store with you. You know? Life is hard. It’s really hard.”

She’s not alone. WREG Investigators found out last year, on average there were 35 to 45 cars stolen every day in Memphis. Police say auto theft is one of the biggest drivers of property crime.

Far too often, owners find their car damaged, totaled or, for Pastor David Gaulmon, never found.

His powder blue Infiniti with tags that read “PASTOR B” was stolen a week before Christmas from his cousin’s church.

“I feel really violated,” he said. “Inconvenience your lifestyle and credit report. All those things will affect me. I will have to do redo another loan to get another car.”

He had to find rides to work or grocery shopping until he could get a rental car.

A newly created unit with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office is dedicated to curbing car break-ins and vehicle thefts. It’s called BRATS, which stands for Burglary, Robbery, and Auto Theft Squad.

“We have a team of five detectives. We try to hone in on one we can solve today,” Shelby County Sgt. Edjuan Burris said.

The unit was founded in October.

Burris said because the crimes are happening so frequently, it makes their job harder. He said the car thieves, many working in organized groups, had been targeting Hyundais and Kias since social media exposed security flaws. Now they’re seeing more Nissans and Infinitis stolen.

Often times, they’re then used to commit more crime.

“Just because that car was stolen by one individual, doesn’t mean it’s that individual who is out committing the crime the next day. They change hands so many times, and by the third day, that car is ditched and the process starts over again,” Burris said.

Burris said in some cases, the car will wind up in a chop shop or sold with fake titles and tags.

“They are being sold in the city on Facebook Marketplace. We get calls all the time from people who say, ‘I bought this car, I think it’s stolen,'” he said.

That’s what happened to Samantha McCray’s Nissan Maxima. McCray said whoever took the car, sold it for cash within five days.

“They had a fake title. They tried to get their tags and found out it was stolen,” McCray said.

After weeks of getting the car back, it was stolen again.

“They say lightning never strikes twice, but it struck me twice,” McCray said.

McCray not only has had to find rides to work, her insurance policy won’t cover the car. Now, it’s a matter of finding the money to get a new one.

She said her friend, who was driving her to work, also had her car stolen.

“The debilitating effect a stolen vehicle has to a family or a person working every day is very serious,” MPD Interim Chief C.J. Davis said at a recent rotary club meeting.

Davis says MPD has also created a task force and is tracking where vehicles are recovered in hopes of finding trends to nab the thieves. They have arrested some as young as 12 years old.

MPD is also holding steering wheel lock giveaways and passing them out to victims like McCray to use if she gets the car back.

“I was hoping 2024 was going to be a better year for me, but it didn’t start off like that,” McCray said.

The TBI’s most recent data shows in 2022, about 7 percent of motor vehicle thefts were solved in Memphis. We asked MPD about the data, but never heard back.

The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office says it solved 12 percent or less in 2022. Since its new unit started, that number has gone up.

Jerrolds never heard if MPD made an arrest in her case.

“They said probably kids, because of the way the car was taken. There was candy wrappers in there,” she said.

What she does know, it almost cost her $5,000-6,000, “because someone decided to joy ride in my car.”

► More stories in this series:

• Constant crime making it hard to do business in Memphis
• Some say the bail system is broken. Here’s what we found
• Crime in Memphis: How did we get here, how do we get out?