Criminals In High-Powered Dodges Can Outrun Patrol Cars – And That’s A Problem For Tennessee Police

Middle Tennessee police officers are noticing a trend. Criminals are, more often than ever before, stealing high-horsepower Dodge vehicles. They’re not just flipping them on the black market or chopping them up either. They’re using them in additional crimes as a method to hopefully outrun the law.

The Dodge Charger and Challenger sit atop platforms that are pretty long in the tooth these days. Despite that, they both are available with world-beating horsepower and torque. Thieves across the nation are well-versed in exploits that can allow them to drive away with one of these performance machines in seconds. It’s a problem that’s been going on for some time.

Gallatin Police Capt. Lamar Ballard, whose jurisdiction isn’t far from Nashville, tells WKRN News 2 that his department has seen an uptick in “high-performance vehicles being stolen.” “We believe that these individuals are coming in with stolen vehicles from other jurisdictions, looking to steal other high-performance Dodges, but they’re also committing auto burglaries while they’re doing this,” Ballard said.

Read: Watch Thieves Steal Six New Dodge Challenger Hellcats In Under 45 Seconds (Updated)

According to Ballard, these criminals see the benefit in using a car that has little trouble outrunning the average police car. “I think that is exactly what they are doing it for,” he says. “They are getting these high-performance vehicles that they know are fast, that they know can probably outrun a police car, so they are coming up in that jurisdiction, in stolen vehicles, looking for high-performance vehicles to leave in.”

According to the Metro Nashville Police Department, criminals stole 149 high-performance Dodge vehicles in the city last year. As of this report, thieves have already made off with 51 in 2023. That’s a big bump and highlights just how easy it can be to leverage an exploit once it’s found.

Just earlier this month, we told you about how thieves in Kentucky made off with six Dodge Hellcats in under 45 seconds. The individuals, in that case, seem to have spread out after the deed was done with one found in Alabama and another in Tennessee. Flipping that story around somewhat, a theft in Gallatin saw the suspect drive that Dodge into Kentucky before he was caught.