Bait car
decoy car used to catch car thieves
A bait car, also called a decoy car, hot car, or trap car, is a vehicle used by law enforcement agencies to capture car thieves or thieves who steal items from cars. The vehicles are modified with audio/video surveillance technology, and can be remotely monitored and controlled. Those set up to catch car thieves may include GPS tracking. A "kill switch" may be installed in the vehicle allowing police to remotely disable the engine and lock all doors, preventing escape. A car set up to catch thieves who steal items from cars may be disabled so that it cannot be started and have specially prepared "bait property".
Overview
The bait car, often filled with valuable items to draw attention to it, is typically parked in a high-auto-theft area. In usual cases, the vehicle is simply left unlocked with the keys in the ignition. If the car is set up to catch car thieves, when the car is stolen officers are immediately alerted, and can monitor the vehicle and send commands to control it such as disabling the engine, locking the doors or honking the horn. Live audio or video streaming devices may be installed allowing law enforcement personnel to determine how many suspects are in the car, what they are planning and if they are armed. If the bait car is set up to catch thieves who steal items from cars, it may be monitored by video from a central location.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Bait car” as decoy car used to catch car thieves. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1795653. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bait car” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.