The National Insurance Crime Bureau counted 268,415 vehicles stolen across the United States in the first six months of 2026, a 21% drop from the same stretch of 2025. Every state recorded a decline. One large metropolitan area went the other way.
That area is Chicago, where the count of stolen cars and trucks climbed even as Los Angeles, New York, Houston and the rest of the biggest theft markets saw sharp falls.
Chicago-Naperville-Elgin against the nine other big metros
In its September 30 report, the bureau ranked the ten metro areas with the most thefts. The Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN metro recorded 11,761 thefts, up 2%, and Chicago was the only increase among the top ten. Second on the list by volume, it sat behind Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim at 21,540 (down 23%), and ahead of New York-Newark-Jersey City at 11,306 (down 16%). The rest of the ranking fell in every case: Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands at 10,008 (down 18%), San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont at 9,825 (down 14%), Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington at 8,212 (down 30%), Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington at 8,056 (down 11%), Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario at 5,937 (down 20%), Washington-Arlington-Alexandria at 5,717 (down 31%) and Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue at 4,834 (down 27%).
A small gap in the table matters. Chicago sits only about 455 thefts above New York, a metro with far more people, and its count is the one that moved up. Nationally, Insurance Business reported that thefts have now fallen for roughly two and a half straight years from a peak above one million vehicles in 2023, and that full-year 2025 thefts dropped 23% to 659,880. Against that backdrop, a flat or rising metro stands out.
Jeeps, Lexus and the Kia and Hyundai fix in Chicago city data
The bureau does not explain why Chicago diverged, and its release offers no cause. Local reporting offers pieces of the picture instead. CBS News Chicago analyzed Chicago Police Department data and found city motor vehicle thefts fell from 31,565 in 2023 to 23,135 in 2024, with Kia and Hyundai thefts falling nearly 50% and driving most of that decline. The same analysis flagged which models were rising in 2024: Lexus thefts up 155% with more than 400 taken, Jeeps up 28% with about 1,700 stolen, and Dodge up 6% with more than 1,500 taken. Police told the station that Jeep and Dodge SUVs are especially targeted and have been used to ram objects and steal ATMs.
Cmdr. Andrew Costello, who leads the department’s Central Intelligence Division, said at the time that the city was trending in the right direction. Lt. Adam Broshous, who leads the Illinois Statewide Auto Theft Task Force, called license plate reader technology a “game changer.”
Context from the same report helps size the earlier drop. Even after the 27% fall in 2024, city thefts that year remained 107% above 2021 levels, so Chicago entered 2026 from a high base. A 2% rise on top of a base that large still means hundreds of additional stolen vehicles across the metro, and each one is an insurance claim, a police report and a disrupted commute for an owner. Those figures describe 2024, not the first half of 2026, so they show what thieves were taking rather than why the latest count rose. The Drive, drawing on the same bureau data, presented a shift toward higher-end vehicles as a possible pattern, not a confirmed cause.
The Council on Criminal Justice rate comparison
A separate measure points the same direction. The Council on Criminal Justice, in a July 28 brief by Rachel Yen based on its mid-year 2026 report covering Chicago and 35 other cities, found that Chicago’s motor vehicle theft rate in the first half of 2026 was 8% higher than in the first half of 2025. Across the 32 study cities reporting this offense, the average change was a 20% decrease. The council also put the rate at 319.1 per 100,000 residents, which is 42% below the 2023 peak of 548.4 but still 96% above the first half of 2019. The average across the study cities sits 3% below 2019.
The method differs from the bureau’s. The council uses city police data and rates per resident, while the bureau counts thefts across a two-state metro that also takes in Indiana. The two sources still agree on direction: Chicago is rising while peers fall.
NICB’s Tim Slater on sustaining the decline
The bureau’s own framing is national. Tim Slater, its chief operating officer, said, “Vehicle thefts continue to decrease across the country, and it’s encouraging to see that every state experienced a decline.” He added that with “more than a quarter-million vehicles stolen in just six months,” continued investment in partnerships, prevention and public awareness “is paramount to sustaining positive progress.” Slater’s caution is built into the numbers. Bakersfield-Delano, California, had the highest metro theft rate at 223.28 per 100,000 people, nearly triple the national rate of about 77.81, and the District of Columbia had the highest rate among states and jurisdictions at 181.94 even after a 52% drop in thefts.
Insurance Business also noted the bureau’s view that organized groups are drifting from traditional theft toward other vehicle-related fraud, which means falling theft claims do not guarantee a quieter market overall. For Chicago, the first-half count is the first test of whether the local decline of 2024 has stalled.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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