We often hear that crime is down, but what does that mean? For auto theft in Minnesota it depends on location, and the amount of years one wants to examine. In general, our state is seeing a decrease in auto theft in recent years, and that’s a good thing. But those “decreases” disappear quickly the farther back we go, and shift dramatically depending on the location.
While much of the state is seeing a sustained decrease in auto theft over the past 5 years, Minneapolis remains elevated over it’s own auto theft totals from 2021, and it’s share of the entire state total for auto thefts continues to rise – sitting at 51% in 2025. Despite efforts to specifically address youth auto theft in Hennepin County, Minneapolis is is outpacing its year to date auto theft numbers by 300, and the spike is largely being driven by juvenile offenders.
The problem
Few property crimes disrupt a person’s life like the theft of their car. Not only is there the immediate loss of mobility, but often there is the associated loss of personal items like purses and computers left in a vehicle which can lead to identity theft or worse.
Today’s auto thieves are predominantly young men who steal cars for the sport of it – not necessarily for profit. These thieves have assumed the moniker, “Kia Boys,” after the ease with which some Kia vehicles could be stolen was amplified in a viral social media videos. These thieves break into cars, race around in the stolen cars for a few hours or days and then abandon them – often after a crash. Those “lucky” enough to have their cars recovered are often left dealing with significant repairs or their insurance company having to “total” the car.
Following the uprising over the death of George Floyd, and the associated staffing crisis that impacted law enforcement, Minnesota experienced an explosion of motor vehicle thefts. And the impact has been felt far beyond those who have had their cars stolen.
According to the Minnesota Department of Commerce in 2020, “theft of motor vehicles increased in Minnesota at double the rate of the U.S. as a whole.” According to the Star Tribune, “…from 2021 to 2022, Minneapolis saw an 836% increase in thefts of Kia and Hyundai vehicles, while St. Paul saw a jump of 611%.” Enormous increases in motor vehicle thefts in Minnesota led our state experience a 58% increase in motor vehicle insurance premiums in 2024 – the largest increase in the nation according to an Insurify Report.
Losing focus
In 2023, rather than focus efforts on deterring the crime of auto theft through a consequential criminal justice system, Minnesota’s Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a lawsuit against Kia and Hyundai automakers for failing to install theft deterrent devices in their cars. The automakers settled the suit in 2025 by agreeing to install improved anti-theft ignitions in eligible cars, install anti-theft technology in all future cars, offer $4.5 million in restitution to eligible victims, and $4.5 million to eligible states to defray investigation costs.
Also in 2023, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced her Youth Auto Theft Early Intervention Initiative, which intended to identify juveniles involved in on going auto theft and intervene by sending a social worker to their homes and offering them and their families services aimed at dissuading them from criminal activity. One part of this initiative that was promising was a commitment from the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office to make a charging decision in under five days on any juvenile auto-theft arrest sent to the office for prosecution. Despite this pledge there has been no appreciable increase in the number of juvenile auto theft cases charged according to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Data Dashboard.
While the initiatives from the Attorney General and the Hennepin County Attorney were presented as promising approaches to the problem of auto theft, a closer look at the data in Minnesota and Hennepin County shows that while the auto theft problem has decreased in the outstate, these initiatives have had little effect on the long term auto theft problem in Hennepin County and especially in its largest city, Minneapolis.
The data
Between 2008 and 2017, according to FBI crime data, Minnesota went ten (10) consecutive years with less than 10,000 auto thefts statewide. In 2018 the state exceeded that threshold, ending the year with 10,082 auto thefts.
In 2019 Governor Walz and Attorney General Ellison took office ushering in more progressive minded criminal justice policies. We saw an increase in crime overall including auto theft which jumped to 11,410.
The dam broke open in 2020 with COVID lockdowns and the reaction to the death of George Floyd which included an intense anti law enforcement movement. Crime spiked considerably, including auto thefts which jumped to 13,662 across the state. Offenders became emboldened and law enforcement became demoralized. Several hundred officers retired or left the profession at the same time our state correctional policies led to the release of several thousand felony convicts. These combined developments were devastating to law and order in Minnesota – and only exacerbated the auto theft problem.
Over the next five years, 2021 to 2025, auto thefts took a clear turn with outstate Minnesota dramatically outperforming Hennepin County and Minneapolis in curbing auto theft, despite specific efforts in the metro to address the problem.
In 2025, the 86 counties across the state, not including Hennepin, had a total of 3,707 auto thefts. This represented a 56% drop in the number of auto thefts compared to 2021. This also included a 28% drop in the number of juvenile offenders identified in auto thefts.
The improvement out-state contrasts sharply against both Hennepin County and Minneapolis.
In 2025, Hennepin County had 6,067 auto thefts. While this represented a modest 5% decrease in the number of Hennepin County auto thefts as compared to 2021, Hennepin County’s share of the state’s total jumped from 43% in 2021 to 62% in 2025. In addition, the number of juvenile auto theft offenders in Hennepin County increased by 72% in those five years. (The number of juvenile offenders has dropped since 2023 but remains grossly elevated over the number just two years earlier – 2021).
The situation in Minneapolis is even more distressing. Despite representing just 7% of the state’s population, Minneapolis registered 51% of the state’s total number of auto thefts – that’s up from just 29% of the state total in 2021. The 4,959 auto thefts in 2025, while down from the previous two years, remained 15% higher than in 2021, and 125% higher than in 2018. Worst of all is that the number of juvenile auto theft offenders in 2025 was 155% higher than the number in 2021.
The takeaway
Between 2021 and 2025, outstate Minnesota registered a 56% drop in auto thefts including a 28% drop in the number of juvenile auto theft offenders. During the same period, Minneapolis registered a 15% increase in auto thefts and a 155% increase in the number of juvenile auto theft offenders.
While some of these numbers represent improvement over 2023/24, they must be examined against where Minneapolis was at prior to recent surges in auto theft. The data shows Minneapolis is doing worse now, meaning residents and visitors will have to decide whether to accept this “new normal” or reject it for a more consequential response to auto theft.
They don’t have to look far to see what a consequential response can look like. Ramsey County has combined aggressive, proactive patrol from the Sheriff’s Carjacking and Auto Theft Team (CAT) with focused prosecution from the County Attorney’s office to address the auto theft problem in St. Paul.
According to reporting, in the first two months of 2026 there have been 5 times fewer auto thefts in St. Paul than Minneapolis, despite Minneapolis’s population being just 1.4 times larger than St. Paul.
Minneapolis averaging 17 stolen vehicles/day and has already registered about 300 more auto thefts year to date than it did during the same time period last year – exactly the wrong direction it needed to see almost three years into Moriarty’s Youth Auto Theft Early Intervention Initiative.
Minneapolis desperately needs more enforcement and less social work.
