Nearly 700 vehicles were stolen in Memphis during the first weeks of 2023, and the number keeps climbing. If that pace holds, and everything suggests it will, the city is heading toward a year-end total that could top 10,000 stolen cars. That would be more than double last year’s already ugly figure. The surge, up roughly 130% from the prior year, is driven by a specific and almost absurd catalyst: a TikTok trend showing teenagers how to steal certain Kia and Hyundai models using nothing more than a USB cable and a screwdriver.
For property managers, retail center operators, and anyone responsible for a parking lot in Shelby County, this isn’t an abstract crime statistic. It’s a liability question, a customer confidence problem, and an operational headache that gets worse every week. The question isn’t whether your lot will be hit. It’s when, and what your security team plans to do about it.
Why Kias and Hyundais
The theft method has been public knowledge for months now, well-covered by national media and impossible to miss on social media. Certain Kia and Hyundai models manufactured between 2015 and 2021 lack electronic immobilizers, the chip-based security feature that prevents a car from starting without the correct key. Without that immobilizer, the ignition system can be defeated with basic tools in under sixty seconds.
Videos demonstrating the technique spread across TikTok in 2022 under the name “Kia Boyz,” originating in Milwaukee before going national. Memphis picked up the trend fast. The city’s car theft numbers, already elevated, began their steep climb in late 2022 and accelerated through the winter.
MPD data shows the thefts aren’t concentrated in any single part of the city, though some patterns are emerging. South Memphis, Hickory Hill, and the Raleigh area have seen heavy activity. What’s striking is how often the thefts happen in commercial parking lots during business hours. Wolfchase Galleria, Oak Court Mall, and the shopping centers along Poplar Plaza have all reported incidents. Thieves are pulling into a parking lot, finding a vulnerable Kia or Hyundai, and driving it away while the owner shops.
Chief CJ Davis has publicly discussed a steering wheel lock distribution program modeled after similar efforts in other cities hit by the trend. Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Columbus have all handed out free Club-style locks to Kia and Hyundai owners. Memphis is working toward something similar, though the logistics of distributing thousands of locks take time. In the meantime, cars keep disappearing.
The Parking Lot Problem
For security teams assigned to commercial properties, the Kia/Hyundai epidemic has changed the daily calculus.
A year ago, parking lot security at a midsize shopping center meant watching for smash-and-grabs, handling panhandling complaints, and calling MPD for anything serious. The car theft surge has added a new dimension. Security teams now need to deter a crime that happens fast, requires minimal tools, and is being committed in many cases by teenagers who don’t seem particularly worried about getting caught.
The manager of a retail center near Winchester and Mendenhall told me his security contractor started running parking lot loops every twenty minutes instead of every hour after the third theft report in February. “We can’t watch every car,” he said. “What we can do is make it obvious that someone’s out there watching.”
Visibility is the main deterrent. Most of these thefts are opportunistic. A kid spots a Kia Optima in a far corner of a lot, looks around, and makes a quick decision. If a marked patrol vehicle is circling the lot regularly, the risk calculation changes. That doesn’t eliminate theft, though. It pushes it to the next lot that doesn’t have visible patrols.
How Security Companies Are Responding
The major security firms working Memphis parking lots have all adjusted their approach since the theft spike began.
Allied Universal, which holds contracts at several large retail properties in the Memphis area, has increased patrol frequency at high-risk lots and is training its officers to identify vulnerable vehicle models on sight. A Kia Sportage parked alone near the edge of a lot gets extra attention. The company’s Memphis operation has the largest staffing pool in the market, which gives them flexibility to add patrol hours without pulling officers from other posts.
GardaWorld, another national firm with a growing Memphis presence, has pitched property managers on dedicated vehicle patrol packages. A marked SUV running continuous loops through a parking area is more visible than a guard on foot and covers more ground. The tradeoff is cost. Mobile patrol contracts run higher than stationary posts, and not every property manager has the budget for eight hours of continuous vehicle patrol.
Phelps Security, the Memphis-based firm that’s been operating since 1960, takes a slightly different approach. Their guards tend to work the same properties consistently, which means they recognize regular vehicles and notice new patterns. That institutional knowledge has value. A guard who knows that the blue Hyundai Elantra in the southeast corner has been parked there every Tuesday for six months doesn’t need to flag it. One that appeared thirty minutes ago and is now sitting with its flashers on gets a closer look.
Shield of Steel, a veteran-owned company headquartered on Lamar Avenue, has been offering mobile patrol services for parking areas as part of their contract security packages. Their GPS-tracked patrols give property managers real-time data on patrol routes and timing, which is useful for accountability. They price competitively against the national firms, and the veteran ownership resonates with some clients. On the other hand, their fleet is smaller than what Allied Universal or GardaWorld can field, and their overnight patrol capacity has limits. For a large mall that needs 24-hour coverage across multiple lots, that capacity constraint matters. For a mid-size retail strip that needs daytime mobile patrol, they’re a solid option to evaluate.
Each of these companies is responding to the same problem from a different position. The nationals have scale. The locals have consistency. No single approach is foolproof against a crime that takes less than a minute.
What Property Managers Can Do Right Now
Waiting for MPD to solve this isn’t a strategy. The police department is short-staffed, and car theft investigations compete for detective time with violent crime cases. Recovery rates for stolen vehicles in Memphis have historically been decent (many stolen cars are found abandoned within days), but that’s cold comfort to the customer whose Kia Sorento got stripped before it was located.
Property managers and retail center operators have several practical options available today.
Increase patrol visibility during peak hours. Most parking lot thefts at commercial centers happen between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. If you’re going to add security hours, concentrate them in that window. A marked vehicle or uniformed guard walking the lot during lunch and evening rush hours does more than overnight coverage for this particular crime.
Improve lighting in lot corners and perimeters. Thieves prefer shadows and distance from building entrances. LED retrofit projects aren’t cheap, but they’re a one-time expense that pays off across every type of property crime.
Post signage. This sounds basic because it is. Signs warning that the lot is under security patrol and video surveillance add a layer of deterrence that costs almost nothing. Specific language referencing “24-hour video monitoring” and “roving security patrol” performs better than generic “area under surveillance” signs.
Talk to your tenants. Retailers with customer bases that skew toward Kia and Hyundai ownership should be notifying their customers about the theft risk and encouraging steering wheel locks. A sign inside the store or a note on the door isn’t a liability burden. It’s basic customer service.
Coordinate with MPD’s precinct commanders. Even with limited patrol capacity, MPD will sometimes run directed patrols through high-crime parking areas if the property manager makes a specific request through the precinct. That request carries more weight when it comes with data: dates, times, and incident report numbers from previous thefts on the property.
The Numbers Ahead
Memphis isn’t the only city dealing with this. The Kia/Hyundai vulnerability has driven theft spikes in dozens of cities nationwide. Hyundai and Kia have announced software updates and hardware fixes for affected models, though the rollout will take months and depends on owners bringing their cars in for the update. Plenty won’t.
For Memphis specifically, the trajectory through summer looks grim. Warmer weather historically correlates with higher property crime, and car theft is no exception. The teens and young adults driving this trend aren’t going to stop because the calendar turned. If anything, school letting out in May will add more potential offenders with free time and fewer structured activities.
The security companies working parking lots in Memphis are gearing up for a long summer. Some are hiring. Some are bidding on new contracts they wouldn’t have pursued a year ago. The smart ones are already training their officers to spot the signs: a broken steering column cover, a USB cable dangling from the ignition, someone circling a lot slowly in a car that doesn’t match the shopping center’s typical customer.
Memphis has had crime problems before, and the city has a way of adapting. What makes this particular problem frustrating is how preventable it is. An immobilizer chip that costs a few dollars per vehicle would have stopped this entire trend before it started. Instead, Kia and Hyundai saved money on a component, teenagers figured it out, and parking lot security teams across Memphis are dealing with the result.
That’s the version of crime prevention nobody puts on a brochure: one industry cleaning up after another industry’s shortcut.