Editor’s Note: A staggering wave of grand theft auto has swept the nation, and journalists — when they aren’t laughing — are either blaming TikTok or the auto manufacturers. But there is another possible, if somewhat controversial reading of the situation: what if the people responsible for the car thefts were… the people stealing cars? And what if our cops were powerless to stop them?

In his full-time Pirate Wires debut, Nick Russo reports from the frontline of reality.

-Solana

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You’d be hard-pressed to design a car simpler to steal than a manual ignition Kia, manufactured between 2011 to 2021, or Hyundai, manufactured between 2015-2021. Smash the rear window, pry off the steering column, stick a USB cable into the ignition slot, turn, and floor it. The rear windows aren’t hooked up to the alarm system, and the ignition system lacks an engine immobilizer, a fairly standard security feature. Hotwiring these cars is, quite literally, child’s play.

The process is so simple, in fact, it can be done in under a minute, filmed with a smartphone, communicated to the world in the form of a TikTok tutorial, and followed up with clout-chasing POVs of the post-hotwire joyride. This is precisely what’s been happening across the United States — first in Milwaukee, and then, as if all at once, everywhere.

Chances are, if you live in even a minor American city, at least a few kids nearby have started calling themselves “Kia Boys,” stealing cars for after school joyrides, and boasting about their exploits on social media. They tend to be in their mid-to-late teenage years, but some are as young as 10. They learned on TikTok how easy it was to hotwire certain Kias and Hyundais, knew intuitively how fun joyriding would be, and saw how much clout the original Milwaukee Kia Boys accrued. Then, crucially, they knew from firsthand experience or secondhand accounts that the odds of facing serious legal consequences for stealing cars were, at best, underwhelming.

Social media, corporate cost-cutting, and a weak criminal justice system have coalesced into the perfect twenty-first century cultural Molotov cocktail. The Milwaukee Kia Boys lit the fuse, and an explosion of car thefts swept the nation.

Kia Boys, Quantified

In 2020, 4,507 stolen cars were reported in Milwaukee, giving it the 66th highest rate of motor vehicle theft among American cities. In 2021, the city surged to eighth on the list, as stolen car reports more than doubled, reaching a staggering 10,477. Two-thirds of the cars stolen in 2021 were Kias or Hyundais, despite the two companies accounting for just 7% of all cars owned in America. And Milwaukee is only the tip of the iceberg.

In 2022, Los Angeles saw an 85% spike in thefts of Kia and Hyundai vehicles. In St. Petersburg, Florida, more than a third of all car thefts last summer were linked explicitly to inspiration from TikTok videos. In Chicago, some jurisdictions saw month-to-month spikes in Kia and Hyundai thefts of over 800%. In November 2022, Atlanta Police reported that 40% of all car thefts in the city that year were of Kias and Hyundais. Kia Boys have popped up in Buffalo, Dallas, several cities in Ohio, St. Louis, Seattle, Memphis, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Antonio, the DMV area (DC-Maryland-Virginia), and Kent County, Michigan. The volume of local news reports on Kia and Hyundai thefts is seemingly infinite. 

Police departments and car manufacturers have started distributing steering wheel clubs to deter thefts. Families whose cars have been stolen multiple times have had their insurance dropped. Progressive and State Farm have stopped insuring affected Kia and Hyundai models altogether. By last September, the list of Kia Boy victims had grown so long that a national class action lawsuit was filed against Kia and Hyundai, alleging liability for the cars’ lack of engine immobilizers. TikTok has slapped safety warnings on most Kia Boy videos. A Maryland Congressman recently asked TikTok to take down all remaining hotwiring tutorials. Criminal defense firms are recruiting clients with familiar language: “if you or a loved one has been arrested in connection with the car theft TikTok trend, call us today for a free consultation…”

A safety for the Philadelphia Eagles had his Kia stolen during a playoff game. An undercover cop using a Kia had his car stolen in New York City. A Fox News camera crew in Wisconsin had its rental car window smashed in a botched theft attempt that took place across the street from an ongoing gubernatorial campaign press conference. 

The death count from stolen vehicle crashes is rising. Four teens in Buffalo, one in Columbus, one in Alton, Illinois, a 71-year-old man in Robbins, Illinois. Several teenagers have been shot and killed while driving, or by drivers of, stolen Kias and Hyundais. A St. Louis woman tracked down her stolen Hyundai and killed two people in a shootout. 

Suffice it to say, shit’s gotten out of hand.

Or has it?

Since we’re living in post-2020 America, I do think we’re obliged to pause here, and ask: does any of this really matter? Should we all just take a page from Seth Rogen’s book, choose not to view our cars as extensions of ourselves, and accept this kind of crime as the cost of city living?

Is it somehow wrong to insist that children stealing cars is a problem, actually?

An interesting perspective, but the many lower-to-middle class victims who’ve been economically crippled by Kia Boy thefts tend to come at this subject from a different angle than millionaire celebrity actors. As do the Kia Boy parents who, having higher hopes for their children than a life of crime, are publicly begging law enforcement to step up and hold them accountable. And as does the president of the NAACP’s Columbus Chapter — that notoriously tough-on-crime organization — who has asserted “we can no longer have our children just running rampant in our community committing crimes, it’s got to stop.”

Unsurprisingly, beyond the insulated world of the wealthy, the basic tenets of working class solidarity, child-rearing, and community stewardship dictate we should not accept a wave of juvenile car theft as a mundane fixture of American life. The question is what to do about it. Lucky for us, the media is on it.

How has the national press covered it?

Partly what’s so damning about national Kia Boy coverage to date is just how little of it there is — the New York Times, for example, hasn’t run a single story on an historic youth crime wave sweeping every region of the country. An article in the Philadelphia Inquirer suggested this dearth of coverage is the result of racism: people don’t care about the Kia Boys because they’ve been most active in communities of color. I would humbly suggest that, on the contrary, the newsroom that brought us the 1619 Project has steered clear of the Kia Boys because it’s a story about a primarily juvenile-of-color crime wave, and they are perhaps somewhat averse to throwing tough-on-crime conservatives a piece of political red meat.

When major outlets have covered the topic, they’ve mostly focused on the responsibility borne by TikTok, for allowing the trend to go viral, and by Kia and Hyundai, for selling cars with inadequate safety features. TikTok is “fueling” — or worse — “causing” a rise in car thefts, the story goes, by “helping thieves” hotwire vulnerable cars. “Is Kia doing anything about this?” asks The Cut, “what about TikTok?” Oh man, says TechCrunch, “how embarrassing to know that your car was stolen, not by someone who maybe needed to sell it for parts and feed their family, but by your local branch of Kia Boys — the cute name for groups of youths taking advantage of their TikTok knowledge for wild joyrides.”

Yes, how embarrassing for the victims!

To be sure, each of these companies does bear responsibility. The surge in car thefts wouldn’t be happening if Kia and Hyundai had equipped their vehicles with engine immobilizers, as most car manufacturers did during the same time period. Likewise, the crime wave wouldn’t have spread across the country so rapidly if TikTok had taken down Kia Boys tutorials and joyride content from the outset. In part, the phenomenon absolutely is a testament to the dangers of corporate negligence, and the power of social media to contribute to real-world havoc.

But the existence of easy-to-steal cars and online hotwiring tutorials does not itself cause anything. We all know how to do crime, and that knowledge doesn’t force us into lives of crime. But the Kia Boys have repeatedly made the choice — are chronically making the choice — to break the law. They’re making this choice because they mostly don’t believe they’re risking anything, and in this regard they’re pretty much correct. There are few consequences for their behavior. That’s why they’ve taken the country by storm, and that’s what most media coverage to date has missed.

Kia Boys are not TikTok zombies

Lost in the flurry of finger pointing at tech and auto giants is the human face of the Kia Boys. A deeper understanding of our surge in car thefts starts with a portrait of Kia Boy culture.

Earlier this year, in Buffalo, teenagers stole a Kia from someone’s driveway, and the house’s Ring camera caught it all on film. This was not a miscalculation by the teenagers. Not only did they know they were on camera, they relished in the spotlight. One of them walked up to the front door, looked right into the camera, and said “the Kia Boys got yo car, bitch.” The footage made its way to the local news channel, and then a TikTok account called 716kiaboyzz posted the clip overlaid with a message: “Omm I took ya shit.”

This is quintessential Kia Boy behavior. Both TikTok and Instagram are littered with accounts boasting about Kia and Hyundai thefts. Typical Instagram bios are “I prolly got your mom kia” and “might take yo grandma shit.” Accounts will have pinned stories labeled “Kia stats” and “Hyundai stats,” featuring pictures and videos from within vehicles the user claims to have stolen. They’re unsympathetic to the victims of their crimes, and they love to taunt the police.

Many of the Kia Boys arrested for car thefts have prior criminal records — drug or gun charges, assaults, disorderly conduct. Two of four young teens arrested last September in Brooklyn, Ohio, for example, already had aggravated robberies on their records. In Kent County Michigan, an officer speaking about their surge in car thefts noted that they’re seeing an overall spike in juvenile crime, including drive-by shootings and armed robberies. In Chicago, a “prolific” Kia Boy was arrested for murder and found to have attempted two other killings.

In a YouTube documentary filmed in Milwaukee last summer, interviewer Tommy G asked a Kia Boy if he was scared of going to jail and if he’d thought about how he’d spend his time in prison. The kid responded: “Nah… fuck the police. [Even if you get caught], you only gon’ do like three weeks! It’s that misdemeanor shit!” In reply, Tommy G asked: “So is there really no punishment for this?”

“Hell naw.”

“No punishment” is a slight exaggeration

To be clear, the kid who claimed Kia Boy crimes are barely punishable misdemeanors is flat out wrong. In fact, in the documentary, some of his fellow car thieves were shown driving like lunatics up and down the street in a red Kia, and thanks in part to evidence gleaned from the video, the 17-year-old driver of that car is now facing up to 22 years in prison. Turns out, driving a vehicle without the owner’s consent and recklessly endangering safety are both felonies in Wisconsin. So is bail jumping, which the driver was doing, as he was out on bail in a felony trial for a previous car theft, having been released just six days prior on the condition that he commit no new crimes.

But Kia Boy cases don’t typically play out this way. Often officers find it difficult to make an arrest, because kids will take a car on a joyride and then abandon it, leaving behind little to no evidentiary trail. Even when they do leave a trail of evidence, in some jurisdictions, police departments are in disarray — short-staffed or poorly managed. I spoke with a Philadelphia resident who alleges his car was stolen, with his Airpods inside, which the thieves took from the vehicle. “I tracked [the Airpods] to a high school, I’m talking the EXACT location, down to the classroom,” he said. “I told the cops and they said they can’t do anything.” To his knowledge, no arrest has been made for the thefts. This kind of policing, paired with turmoil in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, may explain the City’s mind-bogglingly low conviction rate for auto thefts — amid a spike driven largely by stolen Kias and Hyundai.

In the event an arrest is made, Sergeant Jonathon Earl of the Whitehall Police Department in Ohio told me that, absent aggravating circumstances, “juveniles arrested in a stolen car will not be accepted into jail.” Instead, they’re taken to a reception center, from which they “can leave whenever they want.” 

“From experience I can tell you that juveniles know this,” Earl said, “and have told officers after being arrested in a stolen car, ‘You can’t take me to jail’ or ‘I’m just going to be released.’ We have also had more than one instance where a juvenile was arrested in a stolen car, refused at the jail and later the same day they were arrested in another stolen car.” And, despite having arrested 18 juveniles in a 30-day span for stealing vehicles, Earl said that Whitehall has seen no decline in car thefts, suggesting that arrests followed by wrist slaps don’t deter future offenses.

Accounts from other jurisdictions adhere to this trend. Chief John T. Majoy of the Newburgh Heights Police Department, also in Ohio, said “there is little deterrent for juveniles to stop committing these crimes and a substantial lack of accountability. While the juveniles may be taken to the detention facility, their stay seems to be generally short.” This is corroborated by reporting out of St. Louis, which notes that “most juvenile car thieves are released back to their parents,” and out of Beloit, Wisconsin, where a police sergeant told reporters that “officers can say they usually arrest the same people because punishment hasn’t been a deterrent. We’ve arrested several of them several times… [but] because they are juveniles, typically they aren’t incarcerated or kept in services for any length of time.”

When those kids appear in court, Majoy said, “they may be placed on probation or given an ankle monitor” — but, in an arrest made on December 18 of last year, “one of the juveniles was already on probation and had reportedly cut off the ankle monitor.” In cases from Columbus, Ohio, and Madison, Wisconsin, juveniles arrested for car thefts were also found to have cut off their ankle monitors.

A criminal defense attorney and juvenile justice expert in Ohio weighed in on the rash of car thefts, saying “juvenile court is theoretically about rehabilitation, we don’t want to necessarily punish kids, we want to help them make that transition into adulthood. [But] sometimes part of rehabilitation is punishment though and if kids are laughing at the consequences, then the consequences need to change.”

The consequences in store for juvenile car thieves rest largely in the hands of judges and state legislators. Judges have the power to set bail, to keep a defendant in a detention facility while awaiting trial, and — within limits set by state legislatures — to determine whether a juvenile is tried as an adult, which means facing harsher punishment. For both juveniles and adults, final sentencing is ordered by a judge, again within ranges set by state legislatures.

Already, we’ve seen judges send strong signals in some higher profile Kia Boy cases. In Buffalo, the driver of a stolen car that crashed, killing four teenage passengers, is being tried as an adult. When the defense requested that the case be moved to juvenile court, the judge denied their request. Similarly, a 19-year-old Kia Boy driving a stolen vehicle took police on a high-speed chase, tailed by police helicopter and all, through a congested traffic corridor. The judge set his bail at $250K, “not just for the public’s safety, but to protect this young man from himself.” Then again, the defendant — who at the time of the theft was already on probation for unlawful use of a weapon — only needs to post 10% of his bail to go home with an ankle monitor.

While judges are more insulated from the public than elected officials in state legislatures, they’re not completely immune from public pressure. Criminal defense attorney and juvenile justice expert Lisa Herrick, of Texas-based Varghese Summersett, told me that judges often consider current events as context in pre-trial hearings, where decisions are made about bail, conditions of release, and pre-trial detention. For instance, after the school shooting in Uvalde, Herrick noticed that judges started treating juveniles arrested for making terroristic threats with a heavier hand, often opting for pre-trial detention. The more national coverage the Kia Boys get, then, and the more scrutiny that’s placed on how the criminal justice system handles car thieves, the more likely we are to see a similar dynamic play out after future Kia Boy arrests.

Instead of, or in addition to, asking TikTok to remove hotwiring tutorials, state legislators could consider tightening up sentencing guidelines for juvenile car thieves. That way, lenient judges would be unable to let the theft-arrest-release cycle play out endlessly. In Washington, state legislators have tried to reverse 2021 legislation barring cops from pursuing cars unless suspected of a major felony; this could help boost arrests, but as we’ve seen, what matters most is what happens after an arrest is made. To my knowledge, no state legislature has yet taken meaningful action to bolster punishments for juvenile car thefts. 

So, until judges and state legislators pick up the slack, police officers will be stuck in the demoralizing position of arresting the same few kids over and over, only for the kids to laugh in their faces, knowing that they’ll soon be free to keep tormenting car owners, taunting cops, and chasing clout.

The Kia Boys do not fear cops. But they should, and if police departments get some help from those in charge of the post-arrest juvenile justice system, they could. If they did, all the TikTok tutorials and corporate cost-cutting in the world couldn’t spur a tidal wave of brazen crime.

-Nick Russo