Catalytic converters stolen from two school buses and a school-owned van at Bakersfield

Bakersfield School superintendent Dr. Amy Britt said Monday that catalytic converters were stolen recently from three of its school vehicles, causing some major issues for the district. 

“This is the third time we’ve had catalytic converters stolen. We’ve had one cut off one of the school vans. Then we had a bus that had it cut off, as well as the exhaust system. Then another bus [was targeted],” Britt told the Times.

The district has 11 buses, she said, adding, “We need every single bus we have.” The buses are not only needed for transporting students to and from school but for extracurricular and other school-related trips, she said. 

Thankfully, as Bakersfield School staff members struggled to find a way to operate without its full bus capacity, the Gainesville School District administration called Monday morning and offered to loan Bakersfield some of its buses to help get them through until repairs could be made. 

Catalytic converters are devices  designed to convert the environmentally hazardous exhaust emitted by vehicle engines into less harmful gas. 

A real issue at Bakersfield

In addition to the two buses and van that have had their catalytic converters stolen, a fourth vehicle also shows signs of being tampered with, Britt said, but school officials haven’t yet confirmed what the issue is.  

Britt said it costs $1,500 to replace the catalytic converter on a bus, and that’s if they can find the parts for it. Currently, they’re waiting for parts to repair one of the damaged buses. It will cost $3,000 to repair the bus that had both the catalytic converter and the exhaust stolen.  

The theft was noticeable “right when the driver got on bus. It made a loud noise and they thought, ‘This is not going to make it.’ The driver had to use a different bus to run the route. We looked underneath, and it (the catalytic converter) was gone,” Britt said. 

It’s suspected that the thief took the parts to sell for scrap metal because the devices are made with platinum, palladium or rhodium, all precious metals that have increased in value in recent years. Each catalytic converter can fetch anywhere between $50 to $350 when sold for scrap metal, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB).

Britt  says they have started stamping the catalytic converters on each of the district’s vehicles to make the items more recognizable - and therefore harder for thieves to sell. She has also contacted all of the scrap yards in the area and told them to call the district if someone comes in with a bus’s catalytic converter to sell. She’s also let them know the district is stamping all its converters.

She’s been told that older vehicles are more vulnerable to catalytic converter thefts, perhaps due to design changes. Bakersfield’s buses date from 2012, she said.

Britt says procedures are now in place to try and prevent future thefts, including security cameras that have been installed and are now videoing the area. 

An increase nationwide

According to NICB, the crime is a relatively easy and quick one for thieves.

“Removing a catalytic converter takes only minutes using some basic, readily available, battery-operated tools from a local hardware store,” said David Glawe, president and CEO of NICB. “And for the vehicle owner, it’s costly due to the loss of work, finding and paying for alternative transportation and paying anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000 to get your vehicle fixed.”

Catalytic converter thefts have seen a significant increase across the country since March 2020. 

“Vehicle thefts, carjacking and break-ins are all crimes we’ve witnessed trending upward for several months, and now catalytic converter thefts are also on the rise,” Glawe said. “We have seen a significant increase during the pandemic. It’s an opportunistic crime. As the value of the precious metals contained within the catalytic converters continues to increase, so do the number of thefts of these devices. There is a clear connection between times of crisis, limited resources, and disruption of the supply chain that drives investors towards these precious metals.”