‘They Work Very Hard’: New Canaan Police on Stolen Vehicle Investigations

Those responsible for the daytime theft this month of a Range Rover with a dog inside the running SUV had been in New Canaan in the past in another vehicle, police said Wednesday.

And what those criminals do here, Lt. Marc DeFelice told members of the Police Commission at their regular meeting, is “look for a mistake.”

“They look for you to leave your car unattended for that split 10 seconds and the keys are in it,” DeFelice said at the meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “So they’re not following people for a long while—it’s just driving around looking for a high-end car and when the victim makes a slight mistake, they capitalize on it. Done in a split second, probably 10 seconds.”

Though the 2-year-old French bulldog has been returned safely to her owner, the Range Rover itself is still missing, police have said. In New Canaan, the incident raised concerns due to the brazen and potentially confrontational nature of the theft as well as the suspects getting away.

During the Commission meeting, DeFelice, Sgt. Rex Sprosta and Police Chief John DiFederico discussed several aspects of stolen vehicles in New Canaan, where car thefts doubled in 2024, officials have said, in nearly all cases because keys had been left inside unlocked vehicles.

DiFederico said that some residents appear to think that just because police can’t pursue vehicles beyond New Canaan’s jurisdiction, that NCPD just walks away from stolen vehicle cases.

“That’s not true,” he said. “That’s the very beginning of the investigation, and these officers take pride in that and work diligently and work tirelessly to try to find and recover the stolen property and apprehend who’s responsible for it. They work very hard, and police are starting a task force with area agencies, because it’s not just a New Canaan-centered problem. It’s all over the area. Not only Connecticut, but New York and beyond.”

Regarding the department’s “pursuit policy,” DiFederico said NCPD is  mandated to follow the statewide pursuit policy, “which dictates that we cannot pursue for misdemeanors, non-violent misdemeanors and property crimes.”

He continued: “And it specifically says to include stolen vehicles. The risk is too great. And quite honestly, if we start pursuing these stolen vehicles, people aren’t going to get them back. They’re going to crash and they’re going to be totalled. And it’s going to put everybody at great risk. So that’s why we don’t pursue. But just because we don’t pursue doesn’t mean we’re not pursuing investigating leads. We’re not going to physically pursue the car up the Merritt Parkway at 2 o’clock in the afternoon at 100 mph. That’s just not safe for anyone. And as we’ve seen, the culprits, the criminals, have no regard for human safety. So they don’t care. They will harm you. They will harm the public. They have no regard for public safety. We have to take that into consideration when we attempt to stop them and if they flee, we have to adhere to our pursuit policy. We don’t have any wiggle room on that.”

Yet New Canaan Police take stolen vehicle cases “very seriously” and “work very hard to try to apprehend these people and try to find these people,” the chief said.

“But at that point it’s after-the-fact,” DiFederico continued. “That’s an investigation. What we keep reiterating to the public is the prevention aspect of it. And the single most effective way to prevent these from happening is to lock your vehicle and take your keys inside. It’s just a fact, 99.9% of these stolen vehicles are because the keys are left inside of them. We need the public’s help. And quite honestly, these criminals are getting more and more bold. They’re showing up in the daytime. They’re following people home. They see a car that they like, that they want to steal, that they have a market for, in the aftermarket or in the black market, and they’re following these people home. And when they jump out of the car to go inside, then that’s when they get attacked. This is becoming very, very dangerous. Most of these two years ago were overnight, when everybody was asleep. But now it’s grown into something that’s much more dangerous, much more of a threat to our public safety. So we need the community’s help. And we just ask people to please just take this bit of advice, lock your vehicles, take your keys in, and don’t become a victim of this.”

Here are other aspects of motor vehicle thefts that DeFelice addressed at the meeting:

Active and past cases

“As the chief has mentioned in previous meetings, there were 17 stolen vehicles reported in 2023. And in 2024, we did see an uptick in that amount of stolen vehicles. And in 2025 so far, we’ve had two stolen vehicles. And this raises a little bit more of a concern because these two happened during the daylight hours. One from a driveway and one from a public road in town. Most of the cars were being stolen predominantly in the late evening, overnight hours, keys left in vehicles unlocked from driveways. And then we have seen an uptick in the daytime. Of the 38 stolen motor vehicles in 2024, we did recover 21 of those for the victims. And out of that 21 we processed 12 of those vehicles, meaning lifted DNA [and] prints to gain trace evidence, physical evidence to identify suspects and make arrests. There are also five of those vehicles that were recovered by other jurisdictions and arrests were subsequently made because there was someone in the vehicle when they stopped the car. They were able to stop and apprehend the suspect. Right now we have one active arrest warrant that Sgt. [Peter] Condos prepared for [first-degree] larceny for a stolen vehicle. So that’s active. We’re still looking for the suspect. We did make an arrest on a juvenile that goes to juvenile court. So that doesn’t render a lot of attention in the media. And we also solved a 2022 case this past year on a subsequent DNA hit that we lifted at the scene in 2022. So sometimes it takes a little bit of lengthier time with the DNA to get the results back. So it’s not immediate.” 

New Canaan Police process

“If a vehicle is stolen, the patrol officers are the first ones to make contact with the victim and the family. And they take all the initial information and immediately put it out over our radio channels and also the statewide hotlines, so area jurisdictions are on the lookout for the car. The victim also fills out a stolen vehicle form. And then that’s immediately put into the NCIC [National Crime Information Center] Database so that any LPR [license plate reader] camera in the area or any police officer on the road throughout the state, if they run that plate, they know the vehicle. We do that immediately. We start to develop the suspect right off the bat: Physical description, what they’re wearing, what car they might have come in, how they left, what direction of travel, they went and the patrol officers patrol in those sectors, they head to that area. Which happened recently when one of the officers tried to stop one of the stolen vehicles—was in the area, did her best. But unfortunately, it left at a high rate of speed. We rely a lot on video surveillance and tracking systems and some of the cars, some of the higher-end cars do have a tracking system. So we try to contact the manufacturer as soon as we can to get them on board with the tracking. One of the biggest assets to us has been our Flock [brand] cameras. We have 10 of them—as you know, we’re getting more. Those air strategically placed around town based on our previous investigations. So we could initially immediately search those, a detective in the office could get right on the computer and put the victim’s license plate in and we could, in minutes, tell if they left through one of the major roadways.”

Flock system

“Stolen vehicles entered into NCIC, which is the statewide system. And then it’s also entered into our Flock LPR system, which is how we’re searching for prior to it leaving town or we know it left town because it went up [Route] 123, hit the LPR and then had to continue out of town. At that point, the detectives get involved. And we do what’s called a ‘convoy analysis,’ it’s a part of the Flock system where we could identify the vehicle when it’s leaving the scene, and we could trace cars that either followed it out of town or possibly followed it back to the residence prior to stealing the car. So that’s a good development with the Flock system. And then we also create a custom ‘hot list’ within Flock. So that other area jurisdictions that do have the Flock network have that on their hot list, also. We’re finding that when they come to town, it’s sometimes in a vehicle that possibly is stolen that hasn’t been reported stolen by another victim, or a rental car, or just some other car that’s associated with the suspects. But they are coming to town in groups—maybe two or three or four people in one car—and they just get out until they find keys left in the vehicle unlocked and take the car.”

Inter-agency collaboration

“One of the biggest things we do behind the scenes that we don’t publicize a lot is our networking with other agencies. So on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis we’re meeting with detectives from our border and jurisdictions—Darien, Greenwich, Stamford—the bigger cities, the smaller towns bordering Westchester County. We’ve developed a relationship with them. Even some of our federal partners, to try to help recover these cars. We also have other social media platforms that we use to communicate, like a text message among detectives. Actually, I just got a text message from Detective [Thomas] Patten. He’s off right now, but he just posted some information we had. So it’s a live chat that we have amongst a lot of the area detectives since we can’t meet every day. It’s a good way for us to communicate. When we recover the vehicle, sometimes you’ll read that it’s been abandoned in another jurisdiction. Sometimes it has been abandoned in New Canaan, but most of the time it’s out of town. At that point, we determine whether that jurisdiction makes an arrest, processes it, or we do for DNA, latent fingerprints. So the vehicles are processed. If it’s been about a month or longer, it’s hard to process the vehicle because it’s hard to determine who actually stole it in New Canaan and then it’s been driving around the state for 30 days. It could have had several people driving the car, so that is a challenge to our investigation. We are looking for trace evidence, though, and physical evidence, predominantly fingerprints and DNA within the driver compartment to put the person at the wheel. And Sgt. [Rex] Sprosta is actually one of our computer investigators. One of the things that we’re looking into now is recovering cell phones within the cars or even the onboard computer systems of the vehicle to see if suspects have gone and gone into that database with their phone through WiFi and that takes a lot of extra work, search warrants and things of that nature. But that’s also what we’re focusing in on. The suspects, obviously these are not kids from New Canaan playing pranks. These are some juveniles, and also associated with adults, meaning over the age of 18, from out of town, larger cities to the north of us. And they’re working together. They’re coming down in these cars and they’re working together. One thing, too, that we always notify the public: They are armed. We know that they are armed with firearms. They are dangerous. They will confront you.  So, safety first for all our residents. If your car is being stolen,  basically let them have it. Don’t start fighting them. The keys are in the car. Don’t confront them. Be a good witness for us. Use your iPhone. If you can get some photos, get the best details you can so we can effect a proper investigation and bring it to an arrest.”

Investigative leads

“We don’t stay in the office routinely. We’re out and about. So we’ve been up to Hartford. Last week we were down in Brooklyn trying to follow Waterbury and up the coastline in Connecticut.  And like I said, daily and weekly meetings with  various jurisdictions. And that’s how we’re going to work together to curtail this. But with that being said, we have a victim-centered priority. So we’re focused on the victims. First of all, paramount is their safety. Meeting with them. We meet with the victim continuously throughout the process, updating them on the status of the case, and routine communications. It’s good to explain to them the process because the car was stolen within 15 seconds. It’s definitely not going to take us that short of a time to get the car back and to make an arrest. So that’s one thing to explain to them.”

The public’s help

“But I also want to stress that we need the public’s help to lock your car, take your key fob in the house with you, especially at night. But even during the day, if you’re in town, out doing errands, quick shopping on Elm Street, lock the car, take the keys with you. As the springtime is approaching now, don’t leave valuables, in plain view— purses, pocketbooks, secure them in the glove compartments or the center console or even the trunk  out of view. At night, we recommend that if you have a garage, try to use it. And just because there’s a house with a gate or a fence,  they’re gonna jump the fence. Just because you have a fence or a gate, it’s not going to prevent the car from being stolen. Set your alarms. Motion lighting is always good. And one other thing is, social media is huge. It’s a good thing to communicate with family. But just, I want to make everyone aware that just as you’re posting something on social media, the suspects are monitoring social media. Seeing where you are on vacation, posting photos while your cars are left home. And once again, don’t approach these guys, just let us do our thing.”