Photo: Left to right: Hanceville Mayor Kenneth Nail, Deputy Chief Adam Hadder, Lt. Brannon Hammick and Police Chief Bob Long (Aug. 25, 2016)
Late last month, we reported that two Hanceville officers had been recognized for their role in busting a national auto theft ring. Here are the details of the events leading up to that recognition…
HANCEVILLE – The Hanceville Police Department may be small but they do not shy away from hard work. With some solid detective skills and a whole lot of leg work, Deputy Chief Adam Hadder and Lt. Brannon ‘Bull’ Hammick tracked down the criminal who had been selling stolen vehicles all over north Alabama. The case involved a national car theft operation where the accused was able to remove the vehicle identification numbers (VINs) from cars and use a device to create fake VINs to sell the stolen cars across the United States. Some cars were from as far away as California and Texas.
With a couple of cases in the area pointing to a theft ring, the officers decided to take a look into it. After piecing together bits and pieces of a tag number they were given by a victim they started talking to people in the area. This led them to the auto division of the Nashville, Tennessee Metro Police Department. Metro led them to talk to one of the auto theft victims in Nashville, who gave them a lot of information they were able to utilize.
From there, they went to Cannon County, Tennessee, where the pieced-together tag number was registered. The tag was a swapped tag, but it was not stolen. Meaning someone was obviously trying to hide something.
The county investigators took Hadder and Hammick out to where they believed one of the suspects was living. At first they thought it to be a dead end, but after talking to relatives of his, they found out where the suspect worked. Hadder and Hammick went to Murfreesboro because they were told the suspect worked “near a bread factory, selling stuff.” At that point they simply did a grid, driving around and talking to locals. After showing the suspect’s picture, which came from a fake ID they had previously acquired, to some worker, the workers sent them to a shop where they had seen the suspect before.
The shop had no advertisement or any type of business signage on the outside of the building, triggering the two officers’ suspicion. Cars scattered the yard in front and behind the two-story building. The men at the building closed up shop and locked the doors when they saw the police pull up.
Hadder and Hammick ran some of the VIN numbers on the cars sitting outside, which came up completely blank like they had never been registered. According to the officers, the significance of this is that VIN numbers should trace back to someone or something, unless the vehicle is more than 40 years old. But someone at some point has owned it. For them not to come back to anything means something is not right.
The owner of the shop finally appeared to check out what the officers were doing. He turned out to be Robert Thomas, the suspect from the fake ID whom the officers had been searching for. They detained him and called the Murfreesboro Police Department.
This was when the two Hanceville, Alabama officers found out that the shop was currently under the scrutiny of the Tennessee Highway Patrol’s Auto Theft Division and most likely the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). There was a U-Haul trailer in the fence behind the building, and Hammick could easily see the VIN number over the fence. After calling the U-Haul loss prevention line, it was confirmed that it indeed was stolen.
According to Hadder and Hammick, the State Patrol never had enough evidence to get a search warrant to search the shop. Not until the Hanceville officers were able to give them everything they had found on Thomas.
The subsequent search lasted four days, during which time the Tennessee Highway Patrol’s Auto Theft Division and Murfreesboro Police Department seized a VIN plate machine and 26 vehicles. Five vehicles were immediately confirmed stolen. According to one of the state highway patrolmen, the suspects were changing the VIN numbers by one digit. Other stolen items found included a hot tub and a Polaris Slingshot.
Thomas is awaiting indictment in Tennessee. For the crimes committed in Alabama, he was arrested and charged with one count of first-degree receiving stolen property, which is for a vehicle worth more than $10,000. Once he made bond on that charge, he was picked up by Shelby County for fraudulent use of a debit card in Pelham, where he bought $8,000 worth of items. The case in Tennessee is still pending.
With only a fake Tennessee driver’s license and partial tag numbers which were given from a victim’s memory, Hadder and Hammick helped catch the man victimizing citizens all over Alabama and the country.
Hadder gave words of advice on how to prevent yourself from becoming a victim. “When the thefts and resale of autos are so intricate as this was, it's hard to not be a victim. These are modern day chop shops. When someone is wiping the VINs and replacing them with new ones, there will be a good and "clean" title that has been issued. We would suggest maybe getting a vehicle history report on any used car that is bought, such as a Carfax report.”
Hadder and Hammick were recently recognized at a Hanceville City Council meeting for their hard work and accomplishments. “I realize that Hanceville is a small police department, but I can’t see why we can’t be one of the best smaller departments in the state of Alabama,” said Hanceville Police Chief Bob Long.
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