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Tarrant County DA joins task force to focus entirely on rising auto theft

Catalytic converters may not look like much but they're a hot item.

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Tarrant County is cracking down on fighting auto crimes.

According to a release, Zane Reid, assistant criminal district attorney in Tarrant County, has been appointed to work with the Tarrant Regional Auto Crimes Task Force and only prosecute auto theft cases. Reid has been a prosecutor with Tarrant County since 2015.

In the past, auto theft cases were sent to the DA's office and assigned to various prosecutors. All will now go to Reid, who can spot trends or see if there are multiple cases involving the same defendant that should be grouped together.

He's the first prosecutor in Texas named to solely work with an auto crimes task force.

Bryan Sudan, commander of the Tarrant Regional Auto Crimes Task Force, says in a statement that the task force is necessary during changing times.

"We are dealing with a very, very evolving field of auto crimes now," Sudan says. "Older cars, the ones you can mechanically steal, are aging out. We are seeing professional thieves using alternate methods to steal cars."

Sudan says they're seeing very organized groups using sophisticated methods. "We need more coordination with the prosecution of these cases," he says.

Auto crimes have evolved as technology in newer cars prompted thieves to refine how they steal them. They now use fake IDs to buy cars, steal auto parts such as catalytic converters, and reprogram fobs to steal vehicles. Theft of catalytic converters has risen dramatically.

"These cases add up to millions of dollars of loss from theft and involve multiple agencies across the metroplex," Sudan says. "Coordination with all these entities and the District Attorney’s office is the key."

In Tarrant County, the crimes have been climbing:

Motor vehicle thefts rose to 6,367 in 2020 from 5,895 in 2019.
Burglaries from motor vehicles grew to 14,288 in 2020 from 13,884 in 2019.
Fraud related motor vehicle crimes reached 56 in 2020, up from 52 in 2019, according to statistics from the task force.

The Tarrant Regional Auto Crimes Task Force was formed in 1993 to combat motor vehicle theft. It is made up of investigators in the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office, Parker County Sheriff’s Office, National Insurance Crime Bureau and police departments in Arlington, Fort Worth, Hurst, Haltom City and Euless.

Grant funding for this position comes from the Texas Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, a division of the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles.

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hottest headlines of 2024

Billionaires and 'burbs top Fort Worth's hottest 2024 city life stories

Rob Walton, Alice Walton, Jim Walton, Walton family, Walmart heirs, billionaires, world's richest

Photo by Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images

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Editor's note: As we look back at the most-read Fort Worth city life stories of 2024, we see that readers really liked to know how the other half lived. Three of the top 10 headlines starred Walmart heiress Alice Walton and her family. Another hot story was about a local suburb that ranked among the wealthiest in the U.S., and another, about Fort Worth's status as an economic boomtown. Readers also ate up news about top high schools and colleges.

Here are the top 10 most popular city life stories of 2024 in Fort Worth:

1. Fort Worth billionaire Alice Walton crowned world's richest woman. Walmart heiress Alice Walton has taken back the title of world's wealthiest woman. According to a SeptemberForbes report, Walton has toppled L’Oreal heiressFrancoise Bettencourt Meyersof France to become the richest woman on the planet for the first time since 2022.

2. Fort Worth billionaire Alice Walton has world's richest family in 2024. Fort Worth billionaire Alice Walton and her kin are back on top as the world's richest family, according to Bloomberg's 2024 list of the wealthiest families on the planet, released in December. To reclaim their crown, the Waltons toppled actual royalty: the Al Nahyans, Abu Dhabi's ruling family, who came in first last year and fell to second in 2024. Qatar's ruling dynasty, the Al Thanis, came in third.

3. Affluent Fort Worth neighbor ranks among wealthiest suburbs in U.S. Wealthy Americans, increasingly, are bypassing behemoth cities like Los Angeles or New York City and settling down in smaller suburbs like Fort Worth neighbor Southlake. So said a July household income study by GoBankingRates, which listed Southlake among the wealthiest American suburbs in 2024.

4. 2 Fort Worth high schools rank among America's best in 2024, says U.S. News. Two Fort Worth high schools are dominating U.S. News and World Report's prestigious annual list of the country's best public high schools. The 2024 rankings from U.S. News, released April 23, included Fort Worth ISD's World Languages Institute and Fort Worth ISD's Young Women's Leadership Academy.

TCU ranks in the top 100 for college athletics and best student life. Facebook/TCU Showgirls

5. Fort Worth's TCU earns high honors in new ranking of top U.S. colleges. The new academic year had just started, but there was already a report card for TCU students to write home about. Niche, an education review and ranking website, rated Texas Christian University the eighth best college in Texas and the 81st top private University in America (out of 915) for 2025. Out of all 1,517 U.S. colleges ranked in Niche's new survey, TCU comes in at a respectable No. 163.

6. Fort Worth billionaire Alice Walton is world's 2nd richest woman, says Forbes. The rich got richer this year, and that includes Fort Worth billionaire Alice Walton, who is now the second wealthiest woman in the world, says Forbes. According to the 2024 Forbes World’s Billionaires List, released April 2, Walton has a net worth of $72.3 billion, up from $56.7 billion in 2023, $65.3 billion in 2022, and $61.8 billion in 2021.

7. Prosperous Fort Worth declared No. 2 best economic boomtown in America. Move over, Austin: Fort Worth's booming financial prosperity earned the city an impressive ranking of No. 2 in a list of best U.S. cities for economic growth. It outperformed all major cities in Texas. The July study, "America's Boomtowns: Top Cities for Economic Growth," from flexible workspace listing provider CoworkingCafe, ranked America's boomtowns based on population growth, GDP, employment rates, and other economic factors.

8. 2 Fort Worth suburbs make list of America's most livable small cities. Some Fort Worth suburbs stick out from the rest thanks to their happy residents, and now Mansfield got the spotlight in July. The tiny but mighty city 20 miles southeast of Fort Worth was one of six Texas cities to earn a top-100 ranking in SmartAsset's 2024 "Most Livable Small Cities" report.

Sergeant Billy Randolph Fort Worth Police Sgt. Billy Randolph, RIP. Linked In

9. Fort Worth police officer on duty hit by alleged drunk driver and killed. A Fort Worth police officer died after being hit by a car while in the line of duty. Sgt. Billy Randolph died on the morning of August 12 while working a motor vehicle accident on I-35W near Sycamore School Road. During the course of the cleanup and investigation, he was standing outside his vehicle when another vehicle drove through the accident scene and struck him.

10. 7 North Texas cities rank among safest and most affordable in U.S. Crime may be a concern for some Texans, but North Texas has it pretty good: Seven local cities – McKinney, Frisco, Grand Prairie, Plano, Carrollton, Richardson, and Denton – were named the safest and most affordable places to live in the U.S., as declared in a new report by GoBankingRates, released in June.

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