Some people like driving different cars — especially if they think police are watching.
Law enforcement officials say renting cars long has been a popular option among drug dealers and other criminals.
That practice was at the heart of last week’s trial of former Chattanooga Police Department Officer Lawrence Goodine. Prosecutors alleged Mr. Goodine stopped rental cars occupied by young men in an attempt to shake down suspected drug dealers for cash. A jury found Mr. Goodine not guilty on 18 felony charges after a four-day trial and 10 hours of deliberation.
Drug Enforcement Administration group supervisor Enrique Nieves said drug dealers don’t want their personal assets to be taken if they are arrested on drug charges. Driving someone else’s vehicle, whether it belongs to a rental car company or a friend, helps them skirt the seizure process, he said.
“We changed the seizure laws, so they started renting cars to protect their assets,” Agent Nieves said.
But protecting their personal property isn’t a criminal’s only motivation for renting, he said.
“There’s also some appeal in having a different vehicle all the time,” Agent Nieves said.
Switching a car every few days or weeks can throw law officers off a suspect’s trail and afford a suspect some anonymity, Agent Nieves said.
In another local case, prosecutors allege Marvin Nicholson Jr. wanted anonymity when in October 2006 he rented a Ford Taurus from Hertz and then killed a 15-year-old boy he believed had burglarized his home. Mr. Nicholson’s trial ended Thursday in a hung jury, but he remains jailed and prosecutors said they will try him again.
Lt. Tim Griswold of the Tennessee Highway Patrol said stopping vehicles registered to rental car companies is improper
“You can’t get into a profiling situation,” he said. “You can stop a vehicle if they make a traffic violation, and that’s about it. Now, if they look more nervous than usual after you made the stop you can go from there.”
Lisa Martini, a spokeswoman for Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the nation’s largest car rental company, didn’t have specifics on how many cars might be rented for illegal purposes but said it was a tiny fraction of rentals.
Enterprise requires a valid driver’s license and credit card, she said. Rental agents “facially” verify the photo ID with the person seeking to rent the car, she said.
“There’s not much else we can do,” Ms. Martini said. “If you tried to check the criminal backgrounds of every customer, you’d be investing a tremendous amount of time and resources and inconveniencing the many customers who plan to use the vehicle for legitimate purposes.”
Agent Nieves said such efforts might not help anyway. Many of the drug dealers enlist relatives to rent the vehicles so they won’t be associated with the transaction at all.
Lt. Griswold said renting cars is just one strategy criminals use in an effort to escape notice.
“It’s all about learning,” he said. “They learn and so do we. They’ll try something different once we figure it out.”
Adam Crisp covers education issues for the Times Free Press. He joined the paper's staff in 2007 and initially covered crime, public safety, courts and general assignment topics. Prior to Chattanooga, Crisp was a crime reporter at the Savannah Morning News and has been a reporter and editor at community newspapers in southeast Georgia. In college, he led his student paper to a first-place general excellence award from the Georgia College Press Association. He earned ...
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